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rHE  HERMIT  OF  CAPRI 


BL  50  .T37  1910 

Steventon,  John,  1832-1923. 

The  hermit  of  Capri 


r^J  13  19 


THE    HERMIT 
OF    CAPRI 


BY 


JOHN   STEVENTON 


ILLUSTRATED 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 

NEW    YORK    AND    LONDON 

M  C  M  X 


il 


Copyright,  1910,  by  Harper  &  Brothers. 

AU  rights  reserved. 
Published  March,  1910. 


Illustrations 


(( 


(< 


WHEN       JOHNNY       COMES       MARCHING 

HOME             Frontispiece 

THE  LIGHT  THAT  FAILED "  ....  Facing  p.  14 
THE     GOLDEN     MADONNA,    CHAPEL    AND 

HERMIT "            16 

MONTE    TIBERIO    AND    RUINS    OF    VILLA 

jovis "        34 

"and  he,  a  hermit!" "        52 

"good-bye,  capri!" "       132 


3A10 


The    Hermit    of    Capri 


The    Hermit    of  Capri 


Capri,  Italy,  October  3,  190-. 
(Sunday  night.) 

My  dear  : 

You  may  fill  the  blank.  Let  me  thank 
you  for  the  kind  wishes  you  were  pleased  to 
express  for  me  in  your  note  received  on  the 
steamer  at  sailing.  You  have  been  ever 
good  to  me,  and  1  left  my  native  land  feeling 
that  I  had  a  fellow-traveller,  for  you  said  you 
would  "follow"  me. 

I  shall  try  to  keep  my  promise  to  write  to 
you,  so  that  you  may  know  that  I  am  "all 
right."  It  is  needless  to  tell  you  of  the 
usuals  of  the  voyage:  the  ever-widening 
ocean,  the  great  ship,  the  passengers  of  low 
and  high  degree,  the  passing  ship  on  the  far 

I 


horizon,  the  tick-tack  of  the  Aiarconi,  the 
betting  on  the  day's  run,  the  Captain's  dinner 
on  the  eve  of  arrival,  and  the  glad  steaming 
into  the  Bay  of  Naples.  Then  Naples,  with 
its  rocky,  narrow  streets;  its  beautiful,  calm, 
alluring  bay;  its  treasure-house  of  all  sorts  of 
fascinating,  creeping  things,  etc.  The  "etc." 
covers  a  multitude  of  voices — singing,  bray- 
ing, crowing,  bleating  voices;  and  the  mourn- 
ful cry  of  the  brush-and-broom  man  goes  up, 
the  wandering  echo  of  them  all — a  wailing 
Jonah. 

Standing  on  the  balcony  of  San  Martino, 
high  on  the  summit  of  the  cliff-brow  north, 
the  city  below — with  its  flat  roofs  and  warty 
chimney-pots,  its  threads  of  streets,  its  swell- 
ing domes  here  and  there — curves  along 
the  bay  shore,  on  the  left  to  Portici  and 
Vesuvius,  on  the  right  to  Posilipo,  with 
Castello  Dell  Ovo  in  the  centre  projecting 
into  the  bay  as  the  handle  of  a  Cupid's 
bow. 

But  I  merely  disembarked  at  this  former 
capital  of  a  kingdom  on  my  way  to  Capri, 
which  lies  south  across  the  bay — a  great 
leviathan  of  stone  guarding  its  entrance  and 
bearing  my  hopes  of  rest  as  well. 

2 


"And  yonder,  bluest  of  the  isles, 
Calm   Capri  waits; 
Her  sapphire  gates 

Beguiling  to  her  bright  estates." 

There  remains  with  me  the  abiding  picture 
of  you  as,  on  that  warm  September  afternoon, 
you  turned  and  walked  away  so  straight  and 
dainty  "all  in  white  samite,"  your  five-feet- 
five  really  appearing  to  grow  taller  in  your 
departing  distance,  your  wheat-gold  hair 
more  golden  in  the  glowing  sunset.  I  had 
said:  "Good-bye.  God  bless  you."  And  you: 
**How  shall  I  know  that  you  are — are  all 
right?"  And  I,  again:  "I  will  write,  if  you 
will  permit."  You  had  bowed  with  a  smile 
of  assent  in  your  moist,  clear  gray  eyes.  It  is 
to  that  departing  figure,  under  the  rose  of  that 
smile  and  to  those  honest  eyes  I  write.  We  had 
spoken  of  many  things  as  we  walked :  of  your 
ambitions  in  your  profession,  your  love  for 
the  children  you  taught,  your  misgivings  as 
to  your  ability  to  accomplish  the  good  you 
desired,  and,  finally,  you  left  me  to  infer  from 
your  exclamation,  as  we  neared  the  gate  of 
your  home,  "Oh,  I  want  to  be  doing  some- 
thing in  the  world,  to  take  my  part!"  that 

3 


you  contemplated  the  possibility  of  your 
abandonment  of  the  work  which  you  had 
often  said  you  felt  to  be  your  "calling," 
to  yield  to  that  universal  beckon  of  Nature 
to  her  children;  but  at  whose  special  behest 
you  left  me  to  imagine.  I  was  not  left  in 
doubt  that  there  was  some  one^  yet  in  those 
maidenly  eyes  came  a  forbidding  mist  as  a 
veil  through  which  I  might  not  intrude. 
Our  parting  had  come — had  it  not  t  And 
so,  I,  lonely,  among  the  crowd  of  passengers 
on  the  liner,  remembered  the  vision  and 
our  talk  of  many  things,  and,  oh,  I  do  not 
like  your  Mr.  Call — or  whoever  that  "some 
one"  is! 

But  come  with  me  to  Capri  and  forgive  in 
me  whatever  needs  to  be  forgiven.  You 
never  got  into  a  "wobbly-calf"  skifF  at  the 
Naples  landing  and  were  rowed  by  a  barefoot 
fisherman  to  the  bay  steamer,  where  you 
mounted  the  rope-balustered  ladder  to  the 
deck,  and  there,  while  the  steamer  waited, 
threw  coins  to  the  amphibious  divers  who, 
treading  water,  appealed  for  "awn  franc," 
and,  many  francs  being  thrown  edgewise  into 
the  blue  waves,  dove  many  a  fathom  deep, 
brought   up   the   francs,   put   them   in   their 

4 


mouths  until  from  many  divings  their  cheeks 
bulged  with  the  enormous  quid  ?  No!  You 
have  been  too  busy  in  your  ten  years'  "call- 
ing," and  have  had  no  time  "to  go  abroad 
far  countries  for  to  see."  Then  "follov^^  me, 
full  of  glee,"  across  the  bay  in  the  warm 
October  morning,  the  blue  waters  glistening, 
the  gulls  flying,  the  little  band  of  mandolin, 
guitar,  and  triangle  musicians  on  the  deck 
playing  Maria,  Mart  and  Addio  la  Bella 
Napoli  for  your  lire,  until  you  pass  mandarin- 
groved  Sorrento,  the  broken  baths  of  Agrip- 
pina,  the  Bocca  (or  mouth)  between  the  Sor- 
rentine  peninsula  and  Monte  Tiberio — the 
leviathan's  head  of  sheer  rock-cliff  rising  a 
thousand  feet  above  the  sea — and,  disembark- 
ing, come  to  Marina  Grande,  where  your 
two-hundred-pound  trunk  is  taken  on  the 
head  of  a  Capri  lady,  who,  in  her  bare  feet, 
patters  along  the  stone  wharf  with  it  to  the 
omnibus,  while  the  strong  men,  hotel  porters, 
wrestle  with  your  hand-bag  and  umbrella. 
Thus  "Johnny  comes  marching  home!" 
Then  you  are  terraced  up  by  many  a  zigzag 
winding  way  five  hundred  feet  to  the  saddle 
of  the  island — the  piazza  of  the  town  of 
Capri. 

5 


I  am  alone  in  Capri,  though  I  make  believe 
you  have  followed  me. 

You  ask  me  (in  your  steamer  note):  "Tell 
me  the  truth,  why  you  go  so  far  away  'for 
rest'?"  You  think  with  Naaman,  the  leper, 
who,  when  Elisha  prescribed  that  he  should 
wash  himself  in  Jordan,  said:  "Are  not 
Abana  and  Parphar,  rivers  of  Damascus, 
better  than  all  the  rivers  of  Israel  ?"  Capri 
is  my  Jordan  and  the  bathing  is  healing — 
for  me,  I  hope.  Here  are  eight  hundred 
species  of  flora,  and  "the  nightingale  sings 
here  all  the  night  long."  Even  if  here,  per- 
chance, one  should  happen,  accidentally,  to 
die,  no  funeral  director  with  trappings  of 
woe  would  funereally  direct,  but  the  Brothers 
of  Misericordia,  in  white  gown  and  mask, 
would  silently  come  and  on  their  shoulders 
bear  what  remained  to  the  church  of  San 
Stefano  and  thence  to  the  little  cemetery. 

But,  my  dear,  wise.  Little  Teacher,  you  may 
not  understand  that  of  necessity — Necessity, 
that  great  God  of  some  philosophic  clay- 
eaters — I  must  veil  the  truth,  for,  in  my  case, 
it  is  ugly.  Should  I  not  have  adopted  the 
grammar  of  the  mythologists  and  spoken  of 
"It"  as  a  goddess.?     The  ultimate  Truth  is 

6 


Beauty.  You  remember  Bernini  left  unfin- 
ished his  statue  of  Truth  in  the  vestibule  of 
the  Bernini  palace,  in  Rome.  None  but  the 
sculptor  himself  can  say  what  was  his  ulti- 
mate design  for  the  perfect  statue  of  Truth. 
None  but  the  Artist  of  the  Universe  can  imag- 
ine the  perfected  Truth.  Only  He  sees  the 
end  from  the  beginning.  What  is  Truth  ? 
"Pilate  therefore  said  unto  Him,  'Art  thou 
a  King?'  Then  Jesus  answered:  'Thou 
sayest  that  I  am  a  King.  To  this  end  have 
I  been  born  and  to  this  end  am  I  come  into 
the  world,  that  I  should  bear  witness  unto  the 
truth.  Every  one  that  is  of  the  Truth  heareth 
my  voice.'  Pilate  said  unto  him:  'What  is 
Truth  ?'  And  when  he  had  said  this,  he  went 
out  again  unto  the  Jews,  and  saith  unto  them: 
'I  find  no  crime  in  him.'"  Whatever  ap- 
prehension of  the  wisdom  which  passeth 
reason  Pilate  gathered  from  the  informing 
eyes  of  his  prisoner,  in  answer  to  "What  is 
Truth  .?"  he  was  satisfied  with  silence. 

I  suppose  you  went  to  church  this  morning. 
Wherever  you  went  you  found  a  noble  "body 
of  truth,"  but  the  whole,  perfect  truth  has 
its  face  turned  toward  the  infinite — the  in- 
finitely beautiful. 

7 


You  will  be  patient  with  my  evasion  of 
your  solicitous  questioning  (for  which  thanks!) 
while  I  tell  you  a  little  story,  for  I,  too,  have 
been  to  church,  and,  "edified"  by  the  earnest 
simplicity  of  the  eloquence  of  the  priest- 
preacher,  which  rapt  the  attention  of  the 
simple  folk  and  of  my  lord  and  lady,  have 
heard  an  angel  sing. 

There  at  the  organ — "the  very  best  in 
Italy,"  say  the  Capri  people — sat  an  old, 
brown-gowned  man,  and  played  with  that 
delicate  touch,  that  sensitive  feeling  of  accord, 
which  is  the  distinctive  quality  of  one  "play- 
ing by  ear."  As  the  notes  stole  lingeringly 
from  beneath  his  fingers  and  rose  jubilant  to 
escape  and  soar,  his  tenor  voice  winged  high, 
clear  as  a  silver  bell,  melodious  as  a  flute 
heard  over  wide  waters,  with  the  appealing 
cadence  of  Schubert's  Serenade^  filled  chapel, 
transept  and  high-groined  arch  with  a  rich- 
ness and  quality  of  sound  which,  in  its  eff^ect, 
I  can  only  compare  to  the  sense  of  that  light 
"like  a  lily  in  bloom"  within  which  Abou 
Ben  Adhem  "saw  an  angel  writing  in  a  book 
of  gold";  and  there,  out  of  his  very  soul  sat 
my  seraph  in  brown  pouring  out  his  voice 
of  gold,  "a  voice  above  singing." 

8 


In  a  side  aisle,  by  one  of  the  great  pillars, 
stood  a  woman  straight  and  tall;  her  face, 
under  the  cowl-like  scarf  worn  over  her  head, 
"as  it  were  the  face  of  an  angel,"  with  joy- 
tears  trickling  in  an  ecstasy  of  release  down 
her  aged  cheek. 

The  worshippers,  at  first  joining  in  the 
anthem,  ceased  to  follow,  and,  I  do  not  know 
why  or  how,  I  found  myself  with  them,  all 
silent,  impulsively  to  have  risen;  and  we  all 
stood  immovably  attent  on  the  voice  of  the 
singer.  Then,  coming  tremblingly  with  a 
few  broken  chords  to  the  descendo,  he  ceased. 
There  was  a  hushing  sigh  from  the  parted 
lips  of  the  upturned  faces  as  the  singer  bowed 
over  the  keys,  his  face  in  his  hands.  The 
people  stood  still  a  few  moments,  one  not 
looking  at  another,  and  then,  as  in  a  daze 
of  awakening,  melted  away.  The  woman 
caught  up  her  scarf  more  closely  about 
her  face,  halted  hesitatingly  in  the  shadow 
of  the  pillar,  furtively  yet  longingly  gazed 
on  the  bowed  figure,  then  went  swiftly 
out. 

Do  you  not  think  we  worshipped  .?  Ah, 
so  well:  we  in  the  melody  to  which  the  music 
had  keyed  us,  that  in  which  all  nature  finds 

9 


a  note;  but  she,  I  was  sure,  in  the  singer  as 
well. 

I  can  understand  you  when,  in  our  graver 
talk,  you  said:  "I  have  no  rehgion,  but  am 
very  rehgious."  You  acknowledge  no  dog- 
matic creed  as  your  rule  of  conduct,  yet  are 
reverently  devotional  to  the  truth.  What  was 
it  St.  Paul  said.?  ''The  Truth  shall  make 
you  free."  That  is,  Truth  is  not  bond  of  any 
creature  or  fashion,  is  not  of  man's  making, 
wears  no  garments  of  semblance;  is  naked! 
The  Decadent  seeks  Truth  because  she  is 
naked.  Yet  we  must  need,  however  vainly, 
to  personify  Truth  as  a  help  to  the  imagina- 
tion— a  mental  and  moral  hitching-post.  The 
test  of  a  Saviour  of  mankind  is  that  His 
teaching  of  Truth  shall  be  of  universal  applica- 
tion, or  constitute  a  universal  rehgion,  so  that 
each  man,  as  he  has  his  several  need,  finds 
himself  included;  and  that  such  a  Saviour 
in  His  life  on  earth  shall  be  the  highest 
example  of  that  teaching.  He  must  be  both 
song  and  singer. 

Your  "good  wishes"  have  followed  me 
so  far  (thank  you  again),  and,  having  them, 
I  am  not  lonely,  although  in  a  strange 
land     among     strangers     with     which     and 

10 


with  whom    I    shall   try   to   acquaint  myself 
and  you. 

jjs  ^  ijc  5f£  ^ 

Faithfully  yours. 


Capri,  Italy,   November  2,   190-. 


My  dear  : 

Never  was  realized  by  me  the  force  of  the 
simile,  "Like  good  news  from  a  far  country," 
until  your  dear  letter  came  (forgive  the  last 
adjective,  although  it  is  my  own).  I  can  now 
appreciate  that  "blessings  brighten  as  they 
take  their  flight,"  when  their  flight  is  of 
several  thousand  miles  from  you  to  me. 

You  ask  me  to  "explain"  myself.  It  is 
hard  to  conceive  how  so  simple  a  person  as  I 
am  requires  a  foot-note  or  an  appendix.  May- 
be you  intended  the  demand  as  a  challenge- 
preliminary  requiring  a  retort-courteous.  In- 
deed, I  do  not  call  to  mind  any  ambiguity  in 
me  worth  explanation. 

You  also,  in  that  connection,  again  ask 
me  why  I  should  leave  my  clients  and  my 
life-work  to  go  "so  far  away."     Let  me  tell 

II 


you  something  about  Capri,  and  you  shall 
judge  whether  it  is  not  as  interesting  as  a 
law-office  and  as  cheerful  as  a  court-room. 
Why  it  should  be  so  to  me  "is  another  story" 
— which,  perhaps,  as  an  envoi,  you  may 
"know  by  heart."  But,  quilps  and  quiddi- 
ties discarded,  I  came  to  explain,  if  not  an- 
swer, to  myself  certain  questionings  which 
have  so  persistently  demanded  attention  that 
I  had  to  beat  a  retreat  or  be  utterly  routed. 
It  may  be  that  for  me,  even  yet,  "Care  sits 
on  the  crupper  of  the  horseman."  However, 
if  anywhere,  "Earth  hath  no  sorrow  that 
Capri  cannot  heal."  Here  amid  vineyards, 
and  orange,  lemon,  and  olive  groves,  the  rose 
blooms  all  the  year  around,  and  the  narcissus, 
the  morning-glory,  and  camellia  unfold. 

A  friend  tells  me  a  part  of  the  story  of  it. 
From  earliest  times  it  has  been  noted  for 
its  mild  winters  and  cool  summers.  The 
Nereids,  affrighted  by  passing  ships,  took 
shelter  here,  and  the  song  of  the  Sirens  on 
the  adjacent  rocks  could  be  heard  by  the 
native  Teleboans  as  Ulysses  sailed  past. 
Virgil  peopled  it  with  (Ebale,  child  of  Telon, 
and  the  nymph  Sabethes.  Augustus  Caesar 
built  palaces  there — a  palace  for  each  of  the 

12 


twelve  gods.  Then  came  Tiberius,  and  erect- 
ed and  inhabited  Villa  Jovis  on  the  high- 
jutting  eastern  promontory  of  the  island. 
Tiberius  chose  Capri  for  his  retreat  from  the 
cares  which  infested  his  day,  because  it  was 
accessible  only  by  a  narrow  beach,  being  it- 
self on  all  sides  a  precipitous  cliff  surrounded 
by  a  deep  sea.  In  his  Villa  Jovis,  Tiberius 
entertained  astrologers  and  learned  Greeks; 
Caligula,  then  a  somewhat  nice  young  man, 
lived  with  him;  and  there  Vitellius,  as  a  youth, 
had  dreams  of  wild  oats.  There  the  poisoners 
of  Drusus,  the  son  of  Tiberius,  were,  brought, 
tried,  tortured,  and  dropped  out  of  the  back 
door — a  straight  fall  of  a  thousand  feet  to  their 
sea  graves.  That  same  fall  was  also  "a  drop 
too  much"  for  a  fisherman  who  surprised 
the  noble  Emperor,  as  Suetonius  says,  "in  a 
lark."  Here  the  old  gentleman  "got  a  fall" 
on  his  gardener  for  stealing  a  peacock  from 
its  roost  in  the  imperial  orchard,  and  here  the 
supervisor  of  highways,  who  did  not  keep 
the  roads  in  good  order,  was  Tarpeianed. 
It  is  said  that  Crispina,  wife  of  Commodus, 
and  Lucilla,  his  sister,  "were  exiled  to 
Capri  before  disappearing  from  the  world." 
People  who  visit  Capri  in  these  days  acquire 

13 


a  habit  of  "disappearing  from  the  world"; 
that  is,  because  Capri  becomes  all  the  world 
to  them. 

The  ruins  of  Villa  Jovis  yet  rear  themselves 
as  a  monument  to  the  rage  for  building  in  the 
old  Roman  days.  Near  by  is  the  ancient 
lighthouse,  of  which  a  writer  of  the  time  says: 
"The  lighthouse,  rival  of  the  wandering 
moon,  sheds  its  rays  sweet  to  anxious  ships." 
The  house  yet  remains,  but  it  is  "The  Light 
that  Failed." 

My  friend  also  says  that  the  Muse  once 
dwelt  in  the  olive  groves  of  Capri,  for 

"Artheneus  tells  us  of  Blaesus,  quoting  a 
line  of  his  poetry: 

"'Pour  out  for  me  now  seven   measures  of  the 
best   sweet  wine.' 

"This  is  the  one  articulate  cry  of  ancient 
Capri  which  has  come  across  the  ages  to  us." 

Capri  Blanco  and  Capri  Rosso  are  wines 
famous  for  their  healthful  purity;  and,  in 
recent  times,  they  well  may  have  lent  their 
potency  to  the  after-dinner  enthusiasm  of  a 
notable  painter,  a  visitor,  who  walked  out 
with  his  fellow-diners  on  the  favorite  (and 
only  level)  promenade,  the  Via  Tragara,  to 

H 


the  Punta  Tragara.  There  he  stood  and 
beheld,  on  the  south,  the  wide  sea  with  its 
rhythmic  sighing  against  the  rocks,  the  Fara- 
gHoni,  five  hundred  feet  below;  Monte  Solaro 
rising  on  the  west  in  the  looming  grandeur  of 
its  two  thousand  feet,  overtowering  the  gray 
walls  and  turrets  of  dismantled  Castiglione; 
above,  on  the  east,  Monte  Semaphore;  while 
the  white,  flat-roofed,  balconied  little  city 
shone  silent,  ghostlike  in  the  solemn  night. 
The  wandering  moon,  full,  as  befitted  the 
occasion,  rode  in  the  resplendent  blue  of  the 
mid-sky,  radiant,  in  her  own  lustre,  as  a  god- 
dess coming  down  out  of  the  heavens.  Thus 
standing,  entranced  by  the  witchery  of  the 
scene,  with  arms  upraised  in  rapture  to  the 
Queen  of  Night,  he  cried:  "George!  I'm 
coming  out  here  the  first  thing  to-morrow 
morning  to  paint  her!" 

Upon  the  highest  point  of  the  ruins  of 
Villa  Jovis,  overlooking  the  Bocca,  stands, 
shining  golden  far  out  to  sea,  a  statue  of  Ste. 
Maria,  recently  erected  by  the  brother  of  the 
ex-King  of  Naples.  Near  it  is  a  small  chapel, 
built  in  the  sixteenth  century  by  the  devotion 
of  the  Capri  people,  and  there,  as  custodian, 
has  lived  for  nearly  half  a  century  a  gentle 

15 


hermit,  who  now  is  aged  more  than  four- 
score years.  He  seems  a  remaining  soul,  the 
last  survivor  of  the  Lares  of  the  Villa  Jovis. 
The  "  Lead,  Kindly  Light,"  of  his  shining 
brown  eyes,  the  meditative  brow,  the  respon- 
sive smile  for  the  visitor  in  quick  recognition 
of  friendly  appeal,  the  unconscious  grace  of 
movement,  might  well  be  taken  for  the  sum 
of  the  qualities  of  the  gentle  Capri  folk.  He 
sits  many  hours  in  the  sun  in  front  of  the  west- 
facing  chapel  door,  the  broad  expanse  of  the 
sea  on  his  left,  the  smiling  island  of  greenery 
before  him,  the  Bay  of  Naples  with  Vesuvius 
and  its  mushroom  clouds  of  steam  and  smoke 
on  his  right.  I  present  myself,  and  his  tall 
form  rises  to  greet  me  in  welcome  as  I  ascend 
the  steps  to  his  door — the  singing  organist! 

Shall  I  repeat  to  him  your  question: 
"Please  explain  yourself?"  He  could  ex- 
plain many  things,  with  that  high,  broad  fore- 
head, and  in  the  benignity  of  his  gaze  find 
excuse  for  more.  Don't  you  think,  if  you 
were  here,  you  would  not  think  Capri  "so 
far  away".f'  If  you  could  associate  me  with 
this  ancient  presiding  genius  of  Monte  Tibe- 
rio,  would  you  yet  think  me  "an  enigma ".-^ 

I  had  almost  forgotten  your  request  that  I 

i6 


H 
I 

m 

O 
O 

r 
o 
m 

z 

> 

D 
O 

Z 

z 
> 

n 

I 
> 

m 

r 

> 

z 

D 

I 

m 

2 


should  acquaint  you  with  "anything  occult" 
I  might  find  in  my  travels  which  would  give 
zest  to  your  contemplated  paper  for  the 
Woman's  Club  until  I  had  several  interviews 
with  the  hermit — I  was  so  occupied  with 
settling  those  "questionings!"  Selfish  in  me  ? 
It  is  only  a  good  constitutional  climb  of  an 
hour  from  the  town  to  the  cozy  chair  by  the 
chapel  door;  and  there,  with  the  Madonna  to 
watch  over  us,  my  Ancient  and  I  make  close 
friends  with  the  breeze  and  the  birds,  and  call 
up  the  ghosts  from  the  temples  of  the  twelve 
gods — who  have  gone  "so  far  away." 

*^0  ^^  ^M  *f^ 

^^  ^^  ^*  ^t^ 

Faithfully  yours, 


Capri,  Italy,  November  30,   190-. 

My  dear , 

Yes,  as  you  hoped,  I  did  enjoy  a  "Thanks- 
giving Day "  with  (would  you  believe  it  ?) 
a  real  turkey -and -cranberry  dinner.  But 
the  glad  thanksgiving  was  for  your  letter 
received  that  day. 

Your  club  paper  seems  to  trouble  you,  al- 
though the  programme  sets  it  for  some  time 

17 


to  come.  "Courage,  Christian  Soldier!"  I 
have  been  sitting  at  the  feet  of  my  GamaHel! 
But  no  apostoHc  succession  can  halo  me  as  an 
apostle  to  any  one.  By  the  way,  in  the  midst 
of  your  absorbing  duties  as  a  teacher,  why  not 
recreate  yourself  by  a  ramble  through  St. 
Paul's  letters  ^ — just  for  the  sake  of  the 
novelty  of  it!  It  will  be  as  if  you  opened  a  new 
book  for  the  denouement;  for  you  must  turn 
back  to  the  beginning  for  local  color,  times, 
character,  and  motive — to  Matthew  et  seq. 
You  might  get  a  religion!  St.  Paul  was 
illumined  by  a  supernal  search-light  to  de- 
clare the  mysteries  of  the  life  of  the  Spirit. 
How  he  makes  plain  the  perfect  way!  "Be- 
hold I  show  you  a  mystery:  We  shall  not  all 
sleep,  but  we  shall  all  be  changed;  for  this  cor- 
ruptible must  put  on  incorruption,  and  this 
mortal  must  put  on  immortality."  There  is 
some  occult  for  your  paper!  I  await  your 
club  paper! 

Of  the  thirty  thousand  strangers  who  tour 
to  Capri  yearly  my  Ancient  has  been  visited 
daily  during  the  long  years  past  by  men  of 
many  minds,  and  appears  to  have  garnered 
the  intellectual  experiences  and  speculations 
of  the  times,  and  these  have  simmered  down 

i8 


in  his  lonely  meditations  into  a  residual  com- 
pound which,  as  he  administers  to  me 
allopathically,  I  shall  endeavor  to  give  you  in 
homoeopathic  doses;  for  I  have  nothing  else 
to  do,  and  must  "be  doing  something  in  the 
world,"  even  at  the  risk  of  your  thinking  it 
better  undone. 

I  am  sorry  I  cannot  give  you  word  for 
word  the  language  of  my  old  friend,  and  I 
fear  the  transmitting  medium  of  his  mono- 
logues will  only  enable  you  to  see  as  through 
a  glass  darkly.  I  speak  of  his  monologues 
because,  when  I  have  led  him  to  talk  on  the 
supernatural,  the  occult,  and  the  spiritual,  I 
have  touched  him  where  he  lives!  You 
should  behold  him  sometimes  when  im- 
passioned in  his  discourse.  I  have  stayed 
late,  and  as  in  the  starlight  he  has  passed  to 
and  fro  before  me,  "as  a  tree  walking," 
gesticulating,  his  gown  flowing  with  his 
movement,  his  head  in  the  clouds  of  speech, 
his  long  beard  punctuating  his  sentences  on 
the  sky,  he  was  the  traditional  picture  of  a 
prophet  of  Israel.  It  is  said  that  we  should 
translate  the  record  "Elijah  was  fed  by  the 
ravens"  that  he  was  fed  by  the  tramps — 
the  passers-by.     I  am  not  wise  as  to  that,  but 

19 


my  dear  old  hermit  has  had  food  where  of 
and  who  of  I  know  not.  One  evening  I  led 
up  to  your  subject. 

In  substance,  he  holds  that  there  is  and 
should  be  an  Occult  Science,  a  secret  treas- 
ure of  knowledge.  That  it  is  pursued  by 
the  elect  is  the  mere  condition  of  qualifica- 
tion, as  is  that  of  the  priest,  the  physician, 
the  lawyer,  the  artist,  the  artificer.  That 
it  is  understood  depends  upon  the  same 
condition — that  ability  to  comprehend.  To 
His  disciples  Christ  said:  "To  you  it  is  given 
to  know  the  mysteries  of  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven,  but  to  them  it  is  not  given."  The 
elect  are  simply  those  who  are  in  condition  to 
receive.  "He  that  hath  ears  to  hear  let  him 
hear"  is  the  foreordination  of  all  knowledge. 
To  the  Occult  has  been  referred  the  studies, 
experiments,  and  exhibitions  of  astrologers, 
necromancers,  and  magicians,  the  seekers 
after  the  philosopher's  stone,  the  elixir  of 
Hfe,  and  the  universal  solvent.  They  have 
been  said  to  have  had  their  "familiars" — 
spirits,  devils — and  from  them  bought  or 
wrested  the  secrets  forbidden  of  Nature. 
There  was  a  woman  at  Endor  that  had  a 
famihar  spirit.     It  is  curious  how  the  devil 

20 


has  been  thought  to  reign  exclusively  over 
the  unknown,  the  hidden  powers  of  Nature. 
He  is  that  vermiform  appendix  surviving 
from  the  primeval  heat  which  both  science 
and  religion  are  submitting  to  surgery.  He 
is  the  Hero  of  Ignorance.  What  Occult 
Science  teaches  cannot  be  known  generally. 
The  writings  which  teach  of  it  are  obscure 
except  to  the  enlightened :  they  are  in  allegory, 
or  they  deal  in  symbols  of  which  the  initiated 
only  have  the  key  to  the  cryptogram.  St. 
John's  Revelation  needs  a  revealer,  and 
Genesis  requires  an  esoteric  teacher.  There 
is  no  systematic  grammar  or  Baedeker  by 
which  any  one  may  certainly  learn  or  practise 
occult  science  or  know  what  it  is.  The 
student,  the  neophyte,  the  chela^  must  put 
himself  in  condition,  mentally  and  physically, 
to  know  and  pursue  the  science,  or  in  fact  to 
know  that  there  is  such  a  science.  Reading 
Bulwer's  Zanoniy  one  perceives  how  difficult 
it  was  for  the  young  man  to  give  himself  to 
the  pursuit.  And  the  man,  who  had  kept  all 
the  commandments,  inquired  of  the  Teacher 
what  he  should  do  to  inherit  eternal  life, 
when  required  to  go  and  sell  all  that  he  had 
and  give  to  the  poor,   that  he  might  have 

21 


treasures  in  heaven,  and  to  come,  follow  Him, 
"went  away  sorrowful,  for  he  was  one  that 
had  great  possessions."  The  Occultist  must 
give  his  whole  heart  to  his  purpose;  every 
light  of  intelligence  must  be  shining,  every 
force  of  will  must  be  in  hand,  or  the  awful 
foot  of  the  brute  will  break  the  charmed  circle 
of  his  endeavor.  As  he  seeks  to  wring  her 
secret  from  Nature,  he  must  achieve  a  mastery 
over  her  by  enveloping  himself  in  a  spiritual 
mantle  with  which  to  ungirdle  this  fierce 
Brunhild  in  her  bridal  bed. 

Elisha,  the  prophet,  knew  what  was  whis- 
pered in  the  bedchamber  of  the  hostile  King 
of  Syria.  He  healed  Naaman,  the  leper,  and 
■  caused  the  leprosy  to  cleave  to  the  boodling 
Gehazi.  An  army  sent  to  arrest  him  was 
stricken  with  blindness.  At  his  behest  thirsty 
land  became  refreshed  with  water.  To  re- 
lieve distress,  upon  his  supplication,  oil  and 
bread  increased  many  fold.  He  restored 
to  life  the  son  of  the  Shunamite  woman. 
He  magnetized  a  twig  so  that  it  drew  up 
from  the  bottom  of  Jordan  the  borrowed  axe 
of  the  bereft  workman.  He  foretold  birth 
and  death,  the  victory  and  defeat  of  kings; 
he   anointed   men   to   be   kings.       The   fact 

22 


that  his  so-called  "miracles"  are  narrated  in 
the  Bible  does  not  argue  that  Elisha  did  not 
know  what  he  was  about;  nor  does  it  preclude 
inquiry  as  to  how  he  wrought  them.  He 
was  the  pupil  of  Elijah,  and  was  himself  the 
teacher  and  manager  of  a  School  of  the 
Prophets.  There  must  have  been  resident 
in  him  a  quality  of  life,  a  potential  force,  a 
lodestone  of  vitality,  by  means  of  which  he 
could  magnetize  the  dull  iron  of  common  life. 
He  had  a  sixth  sense  pervasive  of  space.  His 
soul  was  an  inhabitant  of  the  fourth  dimen- 
sion. He  was  clairvoyant  to  see  the  powers 
and  principalities  of  the  air  encamped  about 
him,  with  power  to  open  the  eyes  of  his  ser- 
vant likewise  to  view  them.  He  was  clair- 
audient  of  the  secrets  of  kings.  He  knew 
and  foretold — maybe,  caused — the  flight  of 
the  besieging  Syrian  army  because  of  fear 
at  the  "noise  of  chariots  and  a  noise  of 
horses,  even  the  noise  of  a  great  host."  He 
was  a  man  of  physical  superiority,  and  by 
his  mode  of  life  peculiar.  He  attained  an 
incorporeal  development  unique  even  among 
that  spiritual  race,  the  Hebrews;  so  that,  in 
after  times,  when  Jesus  appeared  working 
wonders    "some    said    it   was    Elias."      The 

23 


pupil  of  Elijah  far  exceeded  his  occult  teacher 
in  power  and  prescience,  and  covered  the  stern 
qualities  of  his  preceptor  with  a  mantle  of 
Kindliness. 

The  fakirs  of  India,  so  far  and  beyond 
that  they  are  mere  prestidigitateurs,  by 
heredity  and  long-continued  exercise  of  will, 
have  a  faculty  of  animal  magnetism,  or 
hypnotism,  by  which  they  delude  the  imag- 
ination of  the  onlooker,  so  that  he  appre- 
hends any  object  at  their  suggestion;  or  it 
may  be,  in  instances,  they  do  project  appear- 
ances of  particular  objects,  shapes,  dummies, 
to  which  the  spectator  attributes  life  and 
characteristics,  as  must  have  been  the  case 
in  the  contest  between  Moses  and  the  magi- 
cians before  Pharaoh.  Moses  was  "  learned 
in  all  the  wisdom  of  Egypt";  was  a  neophyte 
at  Hieropolis,  the  priestly  college,  was  educat- 
ed in  the  priesthood  as  became  the  adopted 
son  of  Egypt's  King,  who  was  both  King  and 
the  High  Priest  of  the  Great  God  Ra,  and  so 
was  possessed  of  "that  divinity  which  doth 
hedge  about  a  King." 

So,  in  exemplification  of  your  subject,  you 
might  induce  your  club  to  buy  a   Bible  for 

24 


its  library.  But  while  it  is  engaged  in  so 
depleting  its  treasury,  let  me  add  some  fur- 
ther reflections  —  you  may  call  them  hy- 
potheses —  with  which  my  instructor  has 
favored  me. 

He  says  that  the  evolution  of  the  Human 
Soul  is  one  thing,  the  birth  or  devolution  of  the 
Spirit,  or  Spiritual  Soul,  quite  another.  The 
trinity  of  man  is  body,  soul,  and  spirit.  The 
body  and  human  soul  are  matters  of  evolution, 
but  the  spiritual  soul  is  not  a  matter  of 
evolution — the  survival  of  the  fittest — for  it 
is  an  emanation  from  the  Infinite  One.  The 
Spirit  is  that  image  of  Him — the  "likeness" 
into  which  man  became  —  for  "God  is  a 
Spirit."  It  is  this  spirit  which  is  the  wonder- 
worker. Man's  wilful  denial  of  that  spirit  is 
a  refusal  of  life  everlasting.  To  be  conscious 
of  its  indwelling  is  to  "inherit  eternal  life." 
As  man  can  recognize  what  is  without  him- 
self only  from  that  which  he  has  within,  it  is 
essential  to  his  perception  of  things  spiritual 
that  he  himself  be  spiritually  minded.  "The 
natural  man,"  says  St.  Paul,  "receiveth  not 
the  things  of  the  Spirit,  neither  can  he  know 
them,  for  they  are  spiritually  discerned." 
The  quest  for  the  Holy  Grail  is  to  him  who 
3  25 


has  already  drunk  of  the  wine  of  the  spirit. 
As  St.  Paul  wrote  to  the  Corinthians:  "How- 
beit  we  speak  wisdom  among  the  perfect: 
yet  a  wisdom  not  of  this  world,  nor  of  the 
rulers  of  this  world,  which  are  coming  to 
nought:  but  we  speak  God's  wisdom  in  a 
mystery,  even  the  wisdom  that  hath  been 
hidden,  which  God  foreordained  before  the 
worlds  unto  our  glory:  which  none  of  the 
rulers  of  this  world  knoweth:  for  had  they 
known  it,  they  would  not  have  crucified  the 
Lord  of  glory;    but  as  it  is  written: 

"'Things  which  eye  saw  not,  and  ear  heard 
not,  and  which  entered  not  into  the  heart 
of  man,  whatsoever  things  God  prepared  for 
them  that  love  Him. 

"'But  unto  us  God  revealed  them  through 
the  Spirit,  for  the  Spirit  searcheth  all  things, 
yea,  the  deep  things  of  God.'" 

Now  if  there  should  be  any  heartburnings 
about  the  diversion  of  the  club's  funds  for 
The  Book,  you  have  only  to  refer  it  to  the 
above  so  apt  quotation  coming  from  my 
Aged  One  to  prove  the  existence  of  the  occult, 
"the  wisdom  that  hath  been  hidden,"  and  to 
identify  the   persons  to  whom   and   through 

26 


what  interposition  it  is  revealed.     But  hear 
my  friend  explain: 

"The  human  soul  is  merely  illustrated  by 
the  personality.  The  animal  soul  is  of  the 
animal.  As  man  is  an  animal  he  has  an 
animal  soul;  and,  as  he  is  a  man,  he  has 
evolved  or  is  capable  of  evolving  a  human 
soul  which,  despite  immense  longevity  of  ages 
upon  ages,  may  finally  lose  its  personality, 
disintegrate,  and  dissolve  into  other  forms  of 
semi-material  life  which  is  'the  second  death,' 
or,  by  attainment  of  the  Spiritual  quality, 
achieve  the  condition  of  living  everlastingly. 
It  is  the  inexorable  law  of  cause  and  effect 
— which  is  justice — in  things  moral  that  man's 
nature  and  condition  in  the  future  life  de- 
pend, and  they  are  the  effects  of  tendencies 
voluntarily  encouraged  by  him  in  the  past 
and  present.  This  necessitates  future  lives 
on  earth,  as  man  in  this  life  is  the  product,  the 
effect,  of  past  lives.  Nature  loses  nothing. 
*Be  not  deceived,  God  is  not  mocked;  for 
whatsoever  a  man  soweth  that  shall  he  also 
reap.  For  he  that  soweth  unto  the  Spirit 
shall  of  the  Spirit  reap  eternal  life.'  The 
occultist  deals  with  the  causes  of  things. 
In  this  age  of  investigation  experiments  in 

27 


all  matters  which  may  be  demonstrated  to 
any  of  the  five  senses  have  ceased  to  be 
deemed  occult,  and  the  domain  of  the  so- 
called  supernatural  has  been  reduced  and 
almost  limited  to  the  consideration  of  the 
so-called  immaterial  qualities  of  the  body 
and  spirit;  that  is,  to  the  psychical  feature 
of  occult  science.  The  medium  is  one  whose 
vital  force,  by  reason  of  bodily  imperfection, 
escapes  as  water  oozes  through  a  sun-dried 
barrel,  or  is  one  who  has  a  superabundance 
of  that  fluidic  force  which  more  than  fills  the 
body  and  trickles  over  the  brim.  It  is  in 
this  substance  of  vitality  oozing  or  over- 
flowing out  of  the  living  body  that  the 
'spirit'  bodies  of  the  departed  in  Hades,  and 
other  intelligences  as  well,  live  again,  and  for 
the  time  of  immersion  are  filled  with  ap- 
preciable life.  This  fluid,  'biogen,  od,'  is 
substantial.  It  is  not  only  such  stuff"  as 
dreams  are  made  on,  but  is  the  dream-stuff' 
itself.  It  is  the  magic  carpet.  It  is  that  to 
which  the  hypnotist  appeals,  and  which 
materializes  in  the  imagination  of  the  sub- 
ject all  that  is  suggested  to  him.  It  is 
simply  the  vehicle  of  the  life  principle;  so 
intimate  the  connection  with  the  body  that 

28 


while  it  remains  unexhaled  Lazarus  may  be 
bidden  to  'come  forth!'  It  is  this  substance 
which  flees  when  one  is  frightened  to  death. 
It  is  the 'hoorla,' the  mirror,  which  receives 
and  retains  impressions  of  things,  of  thoughts 
and  images  in  the  minds  of  others  as  well. 
Its  supra-normal  development  gives  us  the 
medium,  the  clairvoyant  and  clairaudient, 
the  gift  of  second-sight,  the  seer.  This  de- 
velopment is  a  matter  of  proper  (or,  as  the 
ignorant  consider,  improper)  exercise.  The 
clairvoyant  is  a  person  who  discovers  ob- 
jects concealed  from  sight  by  distance  or 
intervening  obstacles;  who  sees  into  things 
without  opening  them,  or  has  second  sight. 
It  is  the  positive  and  voluntary,  instead  of 
the  passive  and  involuntary,  use  made  of  this 
fluid  or  ghost-stuff  of  the  medium,  which 
the  clairvoyant  and  clairaudient  person  uses 
to  sense  things.  We  are  creatures  of  five 
senses  in  search  of  that  sixth,  whose  faculty 
of  expression  may  be  Swedenborg's  'com- 
munication by  correspondence,'  but  whose 
self  may  be  the  expression  of  that  real  Soul — 
that  Spiritual  Soul  in  whose  potency  lies  the 
force  to  set  in  motion  and  to  dominate  all  the 
bodily  and  psychic  capabilities  of  man.     If 

29 


such  potency  can  be  evoked  the  laying  on  of 
hands  means  something,  and  the  heahng 
of  paralytics  and  the  ills  arising  from  ob- 
structions of  the  blood  becomes  a  possibility: 
but  this  'cometh  only  through  fasting  and 
prayer.' 

"The  practices  of  asceticism  are  sup- 
posed to  require  mortification  of  the  body, 
but  uncleanliness  or  disregard  of  the  body 
is  as  repugnant  to  the  highest  devotion  to 
occult  science  as  idle  or  lustful  thoughts  are 
to  purity  of  heart.  These  practices  may  be 
followed  by  those  who  cannot  otherwise 
disregard  fleshly  indulgence  and  concentrate 
their  thoughts.  The  prescriptions  to  'sub- 
ject the  body'  and  to  'bring  the  body 
under'  are  only  applicable  to  a  weak  or 
diseased  mind.  'One  man  hath  faith  to 
eat  all  things;  but  he  that  is  weak  eateth 
herbs.'  It  is  only  in  the  perfect  body  of 
'one  among  ten  thousand  and  altogether 
lovely'  who  is  capable  of  the  sustained  la- 
bors, the  self-denials,  the  courage  of  will 
to  become  a  hierophant  so  as  to  control 
the  forces  of  nature  as  well  outside  as  with- 
in himself.  No  doubt  the  schools  of  the 
Prophets  have  been  maintained  to  this  day. 

30 


It  could  hardly  be  that  a  man  having  at- 
tained to  the  'gift  of  the  spirit'  would  will- 
ingly break  the  ladder  of  his  success,  but 
the  rather,  as  he  ascended,  would  drop  his 
mantle  upon  some  Elisha  of  his  hope.  One 
hardly  could  be  expected  to  leave  no  heir  of 
him  succeeding  who  had  heard  from  afar  the 
whispered  consultation  in  the  King's  bed- 
chamber; or  who  had  suffered  unharmed  the 
bite  of  poisonous  vipers  and  fought  uncon- 
quered  with  lions  at  Ephesus;  or  who, 
'whether  in  the  body  or  out  of  the  body,'  had 
seen  the  mysterious  progress  of  the  soul  in 
the  nether  world,  and  heard  voices  whose 
speech  it  was  'not  lawful  for  man  to  utter.' 
The  authority  which  Jesus  gave  to  His 
disciples,  whom  He  sent  forth  to  heal  all 
manner  of  diseases,  must  have  been  accom- 
panied with  instructions  how  to  exercise  as 
well  as  to  avail  themselves  of  the  power  given 
them  by  Him  when  He  retired  with  them  into 
'a  mountain  apart.'  Is  there  any  miracle  to 
him  who  performs  it  ?  He  may  not  be  able 
to  define  or  analyze,  or  to  explain  the  origin 
or  action  of  the  force  he  is  conscious  of  having 
employed.  He  knows,  however,  'that  virtue 
has    gone    out   of  him.'     There    is    nothing 

31 


supernatural.  The  will  of  God  in  nature 
cannot  be  supernatural.  God  works  no 
miracles  which  are  so  to  Him.  His  works 
are  past  finding  out,  that  is  all.  Man  is  now 
engaged  in  the  development  of  his  human 
soul:  some  men  have  attained  to  the  posses- 
sion of  a  spiritual  soul,  and  are  accounted 
as  of  the  Divine.  We  may  become  con- 
scious of  the  existence  of  it  as  a  flashing  spark 
in  the  recesses  of  a  vast  cavern,  and  lift  our 
hands  in  the  hope  of  realizing  its  flame  in 
the  ages  upon  ages.  To  reahze  it  in  full 
consciousness  is  to  have  'our  face  to  shine' 
and  our  'raiment  to  become  shining,  exceed- 
ing white  as  snow,  as  no  fuller  on  earth  can 
whiten  them.'  The  attainment  of  this  su- 
preme consciousness  is  the  destiny  of  man  in 
his  procession  in  the  ages  on  ages  through 
the  world;  how  to  obtain  it  belongs  to  the 
study  of  the  psychology  of  occult  science — 
a  religion.  The  Gospel  of  Christ  teaches  for 
mankind  the  possibility  of  possessing  this 
Christ  within  us — the  'hope  of  glory,  the 
hope  of  everlasting  life.'  The  transfigura- 
tion was  a  physical  manifestation  of  its 
presence,  the  resurrection  a  proof  of  its  po- 
tential quality,  and  the  ascension  of  its  be- 

32 


ing  in  the  image  of  God.  The  Centurion  at 
the  crucifixion  recognized  its  presence  when 
he  exclaimed:  'Truly  this  man  was  the  Son 
of  God!'  The  Spirit  only  can  be  said  to  be 
the  Son  of  God — the  Only  Begotten;  gross 
m.atter  is  the  work  of  His  hands.  The  high- 
est cHmax  of  the  drama  of  Job  is  the  ecstatic 
outburst  of  hope  reaHzed:  'I  know  that  my 
Redeemer  Hveth,  and  at  last  He  will  stand 
up  upon  the  earth:  and  after  my  skin,  even 
this  body,  is  destroyed,  then  without  my 
flesh  shall  I  see  God.'  How  grand  are  the 
possibilities  of  Man!  Need  he  longer  say, 
as  Manoah  to  his  wife,  *We  shall  surely  die, 
for  we  have  seen  God '  ^.  The  occultist  en- 
deavors to  answer  the  question:  'All  things  in 
heaven  and  in  earth  are  of  God,  both  the 
visible  and  the  invisible.  Such  as  is  the  in- 
visible is  the  visible  also;  for  there  is  no  im- 
passable bound  between  spirit  and  matter. 
Matter  is  spirit  made  exteriorly  cognizable 
by  the  force  of  the  Divine  Word.  When 
God  shall  resume  all  things  by  love  —  the 
divine  attraction — the  material  shall  be  re- 
solved into  the  spiritual  and  there  shall  be  a 
new  heaven  and  a  new  earth.'" 

When    my    Ancient    had     so    ended    the 

33 


Occultist's  rhapsody  he  was  so  exultant  of  the 
vision  of  the  coming  spiritual  new  heaven 
and  new  earth  that  I  felt  he  would  be  more 
lonely  with  than  without  my  company.  In 
his  pale,  upturned  face  I  saw  the  glorified 
calm  of  the  Great  Peace,  and,  without  a 
word,  I  left  him  and  went  quietly  down  the 
star-lit  way.  Stumbling  along,  I  wondered 
if  that  Supervisor  of  Tiberian  roads  had 
not  come  back  and  was  in  office  again.  The 
marble  palaces  which  once  adorned  the 
Roman  highway  were  not;  the  rumbling 
chariots  and  ramping  horses,  the  processions 
of  priests  of  Isis,  of  Mithra,  and  of  the  twelve 
gods  of  Rome  with  their  flaming  torches, 
blaring  trumpets,  dancing  youths,  and  the 
thousand  slaves  of  burden,  had  gone;  and 
there  was  only  a  lonely  rock -paved  and 
stone-walled  path  with  the  one  solitary  foot- 
man pondering  the  words  he  had  just  heard, 
and  wondering  if  in  any  former  life  he 
had  ever  been,  or  in  the  Great  Hereafter  he 

would  be,  companion,  friend  (or ?) 

of  you  ! 

I  do  not  suppose  the  Hermit  would  object 
to  your  availing  yourself  of  anything  he  has 
said;  he  has  no  use  for  speech,  or  anything 

34 


o 

2 
H 

m 


CD 

m 


> 

z 

a 

c 

2 
t/l 

O 


r 
r 
> 

o 
< 


else,  except  to  give  it  away.  As  for  myself, 
I  am  still  sitting  at  his  feet — at  the  foot  of 
the  class — and  remaining 

Faithfully  yours, 


Capri,  Italy,  December  24,  190-. 

My  dear : 

I  posted  my  last  letter  hurriedly  to  catch 
the  home-bound  steamer,  and  to  give  you 
my  Aged's  ideas  on  occultism  for  use  in  your 
paper;  and  I  am  glad  it  arrived  in  the  nick 
o'  time  for  the  purpose,  but  I  was  not  pre- 
pared for  the  result  you  have  been  so  speedy 
to  relate  in  your  letter  gladly  received  the  day 
before  yesterday,  part  of  which  I  could  not 
resist  the  temptation  to  read  to  the  Aged 
Author  on  the  evening  of  that  day.  It  is  the 
part  in  which  you  say  that,  with  many  quota- 
tion marks,  and  "It  is  saids,"  and  "It  is 
helds,"  you  interweaved  your  paper  with 
extracts  from  the  Hermit's  outgivings;  but 
had  not  given  any  consideration  to  the  few 
lines  about  reincarnation,  a  subject  in  which 

35 


you  had  never  taken  much  interest.  I  can 
imagine  the  explosions  with  which  you  say 
those  "few  Hnes"  were  met:  "Do  you 
believe  in  reincarnation  ?  Do  you  believe  in 
mncarnation  ?"  Your  response:  "Do  you 
think  that  I,  my  ego,  my  self,  am  a  creature  of 
flesh  and  blood  ?"  was  well  seconded  by  a 
facetious  friend  with:  "No,  I  don't  think 
you're  a  mere  'critter  creetur!'"  But,  oh! 
how  did  you  cover  your  defenceless  head 
when  the  little,  pale  innocent  exclaimed: 
"Why,  I  never  knew  that  oculists  were  so 
religious!"  No  wonder,  with  the  pelting  you 
received,  you  felt  that  you  were  like  "a  cer- 
tain man  going  down  from  Jerusalem  to 
Jericho."  I  always  knew  you  had  gay  re- 
sources, and  it  was  with  heightened  respect 
therefor,  and  without  disesteem  for  the  club, 
that  I  learn  that  you  rounded  it  up  with  that 
old,  old  conundrum:  "Where  was  Moses 
when  the  light  went  out  V  To  which  they 
all  cried  out:  "In  the  dark!"  And  then,  to 
your,  "What  light  remained  V  they  hummed 
and  ah'd  until  the  little  innocent  one  re- 
deemed herself  with:  "Oh,  the  Israelite!" 
Then  you  came  in  with  an  inning:  "When 
the  light  of  this  life  goes  out  and  /  am  in 

36 


the  Great  Dark,  the  Israel-Hght  will  remain; 
shall  remain  because  it  must  have  been 
before  the  lamp  of  this  life  was  lit:  the  light 
but  illumined,  it  did  not  create  Moses  !"3^7^ 

Please  return  my  thanks  to  your  "good 
Samaritan,"  whose  hair  threaded  with  gray 
years  of  experience  and  in  the  depths  of 
whose  dark-blue  eyes  shine  the  sacred  secrets 
of  many  things,  who,  at  adjournment,  smiling, 
whispered:  "Your  Israel-light  saved  you." 

After  I  had  concluded  your  report,  the 
dear  old  man  rather  tentatively  remarked: 
"The  dear  girl,  the  good  woman!"  He 
did  not  continue,  but  fell  into  one  of  his 
reflective  moods,  and  I  left  him  to  his  medi- 
tations. 

You  say  you  never  had  taken  much  in- 
terest in  the  subject.  No,  you  haven't  been 
with  the  Hermit.  Did  you  ever  think,  when 
in  the  night  you  looked  up  at  the  stars, 
millions  and  millions  of  miles  away,  that  you 
had  not  much  business  with  them— except 
to  apostrophize  ?  Is  not  this  earth,  of  which 
we  know  so  little,  so  little — not  even  how  the 
grass  grows  on  it — big  enough  to  house  us 
for  some  time  to  come  ?  Isn't  this  hive  large 
enough  to  store  all  the  honey  we  can  gather 

37 


from  the  gardens  of  God  and  then  come  back 
here  for  a  span  of  threescore  and  ten  years 
out  of,  say,  every  two  thousand  ?  If  we 
could  only  realize  that  the  true  life  is  that 
of  the  conscious  spirit,  we  would  consider 
our  immersion  into  this  world  but  a  baptism 
to  a  new  birth  in  "heaven."  I  am  reminded 
of  a  question  you  ask:  "What  do  we  do  be- 
tween births?"  "Sleep,  perhaps  to  dream," 
says  Hamlet.  But  what  do  you  do  now } 
You  think.  The  outer  world  with  which, 
during  this  life,  you  come  into  contact 
through  your  senses,  merely  furnishes  you 
food  for  thought;  then  you  go  away  until  you 
have  exhausted  the  subject  and  are  hungry 
again.  You  wrestle  with  ignorance,  the  lack 
of  divine  perfection  (some  call  that  lack. 
Evil);  you  touch  the  earth  and  gather  strength 
of  experience,  labor,  suffering,  love,  and 
finally,  when  in  exhaustive  possession  of  all, 
conquer.  You  learn  and  sing  the  score  of 
all  the  music  of  this  world,  and,  when 
proficient,  join  the  "Choir  Invisible."  In 
heaven  there  are  many  mansions,  and  you 
must  furnish  and  inhabit  them  all.  The 
fact  of  His  going  prepared  them  for  your 
faith. 

38 


I  do  not  think  that  you  need  be  afraid  of 
the  "gods  many"  of  St.  Paul,  or  of  the 
Pantheon  of  the  pagan. 

If  there  be  any  differences  in  the  degrees  of 
advancement  of  humanity  in  the  spiritual 
world  when  released  from  the  wheel  of  in- 
carnation, they  will  not  be  greater  than  those 
on  the  earth  now.  There  will  be  work  and 
joy  enough — as  there  is  here  and  now. 
As  Admiral  Schley  said,  after  the  victory  off 
Santiago:  "There's  glory  enough  for  all." 

I  know  there  are  many  questions  as  to  how, 
when,  and  where  you  lived  during  past  lives 
on  earth.  When  you  think  of  it,  the  same 
questions  arise  as  to  you — you,  the  Thinker; 
you,  the  Dreamer,  the  Word-Builder,  during 
this  present  life — who  have  in  haunt  "many 
a  quaint  and  curious  volume  of  forgotten 
lore." 

If  the  essential  you  is  a  veritable  thing,  a 
substance  however  ethereal,  however  subtile 
— as  magnetic  force,  electricity,  or  the  ether 
itself,  is  a  thing — then  you  have  existed  before 
you  became  manifested  in  that  beautiful  body 
of  yours;  and  I  may  loyally  add,  so  lived  that 
you  deserved  your  present  habitation.  Grant- 
ed that  you  lived  on  this  planet,  you  were 

39 


with  your  kindred-soul  relations,  of  all  sorts, 
and  you  gravitated  to  this  life  Kinward.  Even 
obedience  to  the  law  of  motion  by  way  of 
least  resistance  would  bring  this  accord. 
As  "Love  is  stronger  than  death,  many 
waters  cannot  drown  it,','  the  soul  seeks 
its  companion-soul  when  reincarnated.  Then 
don't  you  think  loving  should  find  its  object 
without  striving,  without  impatience,  with- 
out jealousy  ?  It  should  come  from  above, 
as  the  dew  from  the  sky  of  former  lives. 
True  love  is  not  made,  it  is  born;  it  Is  the 
child  of  the  past  and  of  interbirth  dreams; 
it  is  the  honey  stored  from  all  the  flowers 
of  the  life-fields.  The  object  loved  is  the 
ideal  pictured  by  all  our  past  lives — for 
they  are  the  painters.  Such  love  is  worth 
waiting  for  as  we  wait  for  the  rose  to  bloom 
from  seed  planted  long  ago.  If  we  do  not, 
in  this  one  life,  meet  our  ideal,  this  true  love, 
then  single  blessedness  is  no  failure. 

You  say:  "  It  is  not  very  amusing  to  have  to 
be  born  again  and  to  work  out  my  salvation. 
Once  is  enough  for  me.  So  far,  life  is  hardly 
worth  living  again."  But,  my  dear,  you  will 
not  live  the  same  life  again;  you  will  know 
better  how  to  live.     Last  evening  I  was  at  the 

40 


chapel  door  again  and  told  my  Ancient  what 
you  had  further  written:  that  you  wished 
you  could  live  your  present  life  over  again 
if  you  could  only  be  born  with  the  knowledge 
you  now  have,  for  you  could  then  avoid 
making  many  grievous  mistakes  and  order 
your  hfe  on  different  and  greatly  higher 
levels. 

"Yes,  yes,"  he  began,  "that  is  the  wish  of 
unreflection;  but  it  shows  a  noble  discontent 
which  is  the  seed  of  progress.  Your  friend 
may  have  cause  for  her  dissatisfaction.  She 
may  have  lost  some  opportunity,  failed  to 
realize  some  ideal — as  we  all  have.  Ah  me! 
Yet  the  fact  that  she  perceives  and  acknowl- 
edges such  loss  and  failure  is  evidence  of  her 
high  intent.  She  can  begin  a  new  life,  be 
born  again,  now!  Let  her  re-form  her 
broken  ideals,  and,  having  unmasked  her 
enemies — her  weaknesses  and  faults — begin 
the  battle  anew.  However,  she  may  console 
herself,  in  part;  she  has  already  fought  a  good 
fight — for  what  was  she  when  she  last  lived 
on  earth .?  Her  discontent  is  of  ancient 
seeding,  and  is  now  fruiting  in  grander  as- 
pirations. All  that  she  is  now  is  plus  what 
she  has  been  In  the  past.  Let  her  consider 
4  41 


the  pit  from  which  she  has  been  digged,  and 
take  courage.  I  am  glad,  young  man,  that 
you  have  such  a  friend." 

As  he  concluded  we  sat  in  silence  for 
some  time,  watching  the  full  moon  sinking 
over  Monte  Solaro  into  your  west,  and  I, 
following  it  over  sea  and  land,  came  to  the 
gate  of  our  parting;  then,  rather  thinking 
aloud  as  in  a  dream  than  responding  to  him, 
I  said:  "So  am  I."  I  felt  him  detect  and 
follow  my  gaze,  and  then: 

"Indeed!"  was  all  my  Wise  One  said. 

Once  I  heard,  "as  the  voice  of  one  crying 
in  the  wilderness,"  one  who  had  lost  the 
way,  was  bewildered,  despairing,  for  the  paths 
were  tangled,  crooked;  before  and  behind 
was  the  gloom  of  impending  forest:  "I  wish 
I  had  never  been  born,  but  /  cannot  get 
back!"  The  mistakes  of  the  years  past  were 
a  maze,  the  future  was  a  continuing  labyrinth. 
It  was  dreadful,  that  "I  cannot  get  back!" 
To  such  a  caged  starling,  is  there  not  some 
solace  in  the  fact  that  although  it  cannot  get 
back  it  can  go  forward — can  rest,  review,  and 
repent  its  errors,  and  come  again  into  the 
wilderness  and  make  straight  its  paths  ? 
Withal,   there  is  one   reflection  which   gives 

42 


us  pause.  There  is  no  escape  of  the  soul 
from  reincarnation  by  shuffling  off  this  mortal 
coil;  death  does  not  give  absolution;  if  one 
life  is  not  worth  living,  we  must  live  until  it 
is  made  worth  while;  the  coward  suicide  but 
prolongs  his  task  of  Sisyphus. 

That  we  are  to  be  born  again  into  this 
earth-life  is  what  makes  this  life  worth  living, 
my  old  friend  says.  That  we  shall  try  again 
gives  a  zest  to  the  present;  for  the  manner 
in  which  we  enjoy  or  suffer  now  we  will  en- 
rich or  impoverish  the  hereafter  life,  with 
the  added  enrichment  of  the  intermediate 
rest,  the  dream-life.  The  motives,  the 
thoughts  (for  "thoughts  are  things")  will 
give  suggestion  to  the  hereafter  even  as  "the 
child  is  father  of  the  man."  The  lives  past 
are  an  anagoge  to  the  present  one.  If  it  is 
not  "  amusing"  it  is  verily  interesting.  When 
we  go  hence,  don't  you  think  we  shall  ponder 
of  things  left  undone,  of  mistakes  to  be 
corrected,  kindnesses  foreborne;  the  failure 
of  one  may  become  the  triumph  of  the  next 
life;  the  unsatisfied  longings  of  the  one  be 
adjusted  in  the  next  by  wisdom  gained  from 
reflection  in  our  intermediary  life — "  heaven." 
And  so  we  will  go  on  through  the  ages  until 

43 


in  the  divine  progress  (for  it  is  a  progress)  of 
all  things  we  become  "sons  of  God."  Oh! 
life  is  worth  hving,  worth  loving,  because  we 
may,  some  day,  attain  to  the  love  which 
God  has  for  all  things. 

In  your  past  Hfe  you  may  have  been  a  pupil 
of  some  master  of  the  ferule  and  rod,  and 
often  craved  to  show  him  what  a  teacher 
should  be.  I  hope,  now,  if  he  is  learning  his 
lessons  of  you,  his  head  is  hot  under  the  coals 
of  fire  you  heap  upon  it. 

It  is  this  past — the  causes  set  in  motion 
from  life  to  life — that  is  the  suggestion  which 
projects  the  lesson  of  one  life  into  another, 
and  is  really  that  which  Charles  Grant,  in 
his  "Poem  of  Life,"  personifies: 

"Ere  a  babe  is  born  to  its  bliss  or  harm, 
God  takes  the  naked  soul  on  His   arm, 
And  whispers  a  great  word  in  his  ear, 
So  that  it  cannot  choose  but  hear. 
On  whatever  land  that  babe  shall  grow. 
Whether  the  world  shall  hear  or  know, 
If  he  be  strong,  or  if  he  be  weak, 
No  other  word  his  soul  shall  speak." 

Blessed  is  she  who  hath  ears  to  hear  that 
word!     You    have    heard    the    story   of  the 

44 


"Lost  Name"?  The  true  name  of  the 
Supreme,  the  Only  One,  was  given  by  Him 
to  a  wise  man,  who  was  to  impart  it  only 
with  his  dying  breath  to  one  other.  It  was 
passed  thus  from  one  to  another  until  a  Wise 
One,  dying,  sought  to  transmit  it  to  a  youth 
as  his  successor,  but,  as  with  expiring  breath 
he  was  uttering  it,  the  youth  turned  to  listen 
to  the  song  of  a  girl  beneath  the  window,  and 
— alas!  the  name,  the  holy  word,  unheard, 
was  lost!  So,  now,  we  have  only  man-made 
symbols  to  signify  the  unutterable  mystery. 

Oh  no,  I  am  not  "studying  for  the  minis- 
try";  I  am  simply  hermiting. 

You  further  add  that  you  avoided  mention 
in  your  club  paper  of  the  Hermit's  occult 
explanation  of  the  faculties  of  Spirit-mediums, 
because,  as  their  performances  are  mostly  in 
the  dark,  you  "did  not  deem  it  best  to  in- 
troduce the  shady  subject."  Let  me  suggest 
what  I  infer  from  the  Ancient's  theory  (?)  of 
vibrations.  The  light  from  the  sun  is  hurled 
to  the  earth  at  the  rate  of  about  ninety-five 
million  miles  in  eight  minutes;  in  vibrations 
it  beats  upon  and  penetrates  the  atmosphere 
of  the  earth,  which  is  about  forty  miles  thick 
and  has  a  weight  of  fifteen  pounds  to  the 

45 


square  inch  on  the  earth's  surface.  It  strikes 
the  earth  with  a  direct  force  equal  to  nearly  a 
hundred  thousand  tons  weight.  Now,  don't 
you  think  that  force  must  be  accounted  when 
dealing  with  that  subtile  fluid  (if  it  may  be 
so  called)  of  vital  or  magnetic  energy  oozing 
out  of  or  overflowing  from  the  Medium  ? 
It  would  seem  that  the  direct  rays  of  the  sun 
driven,  palpitating  with  throbbing  percussion 
upon  the  earth  would  break  in  storm  upon 
the  fragile,  tenuous  waves  of  ooze  or  over- 
flow of  mediumistic  magnetism,  and  drown 
any  spook  who  adventured  his  frail  bark 
across  the  Styx.  The  surging  push  of  the 
sun's  rays  of  light  is  a  force  which  con- 
tinually aids  the  centrifugal  flight  of  the 
planets,  in  a  degree  counteracting  the  power 
of  gravity  of  the  sun's  immensity. 

Those  who  deny  the  longing  and  the  pitiful 
attempts  of  the  disembodied  to  communicate 
with  their  kindred  on  earth  usuallv  disclose 
a  preference  to  cut  out  the  hereafter  alto- 
gether— probably  for  reasons  of  their  own. 
I  broached  inquiringly  this  subject  of  medium- 
ship  to  the  Hermit,  but  all  the  information  ( ?) 
he  vouchsafed  was,  "Alas,  poor  Medium!" 

Yet  there  must  be  some  fluid  to  bear  the 

46 


wireless  telegrams  of  disunited  souls,  which 
the  patience  of  the  open-minded  Scientist 
and  the  hope  of  the  Christian  shall  yet 
probatively  rediscover. 

Who  shall  say  that,  in  the  complementary 
and  now  invisible  (as  the  infra-red  and  the 
ultra-violet)  rays  of  light,  the  ghostly  fingers 
that  rap  and  write  may  not  become  sensible 
to  mortal  eyes  ? 

«^  ^1^  ^u  u^  ^u 

*    '  ^*  ^^  ^^  ^^  ^^ 

Faithfully  yours, 


Capri,  Italy,  December  27,   190- 

My  dear  : 

For  fear  of  being  tiresome  to  you,  I  did  not 
attempt  to  answer  all  the  inquiries  in  your 
last  (club!)  letter.  Besides,  I  have  had  an- 
other sitting  with  my  Gamaliel. 

I  am  pleased  to  find  you  interested  in  this 
little  island,  but  hardly  flattered  by  your 
saying  this  "dot  on  the  earth  must  derive  its 
color  from  the  eyes  which  seem  to  be  in  love 
with  it";  and  you  intimate  that  Capri 
Rosso  has  also  lent  its  rubiness  to  beautify 

47 


it.  But  I  can  say,  as  Daniel  Webster  said  of 
Massachusetts:  "There  she  is.  Behold  her, 
and  judge  for  yourselves!"  It  is  not  her 
blue,  white,  red,  and  green  grottos,  her 
caves,  her  crumbled  altars  of  Mithra  and 
the  gods;  the  Saracen  watch-towers  embrasur- 
ing its  west  coast;  the  grim,  tattered  castle  of 
Barbarossa  on  steepled  Monte  Solaro,  or 
even  the  good  people  who  cheerily  build  and 
plant,  worship  and  make  merry;  but  it  is 
the  altogether,  the  atmosphere  of  the  whole 
island,  which  makes  one  feel  not  only  alive 
but  living. 

You  say  you  are  "glad  to  learn  about  the 
occult  matters  the  Hermit  talked  of,"  and 
ask  me,  "as  his  pupil,  to  be  prepared  for 
'exams.'"  My  Seer  is  sufficient  unto  him- 
self— an  oracle  on  his  own  account,  without 
any  "assumacy."  He  believes  in  the  man- 
datory permission  given  originally  when 
Adam  was  installed  in  the  command  of  the 
earth,  his  commissary  limited  by:  "Of  every 
grain  that  beareth  seed  thou  shalt  eat";  and, 
through  obedience,  the  days  of  his  years  are 
threescore  years  and  ten;  and  by  reason  of 
strength  they  are  fourscore,  yet  is  their 
strength  rest  and  gladness! 

48 


The  trouble  with  some  of  your  club  mem- 
bers is  that  they  enjoy  the  bliss  of  ignorance; 
particularly  that  one  who  came  out  of  ambush 
with  her  22-calibre  black  eyes  levelled  at  you 
and  demanded  that  you  stand  and  deliver 
with:  "Oh!  what  you  say  about  Elisha — 
why,  that's  in  the  Bible!  Give  us  something 
fresh!"  You  might  refer  such  a  one  to 
the  evidences  gathered  in  late  years,  since 
scientific  methods  in  collecting  facts  have 
been  instituted,  and  to  the  deductions  there- 
from which  at  least  tend  to  prove  that  the 
individual  soul  (Spirit,  Thinker)  does  exist 
after  death,  and  that  it  is  possible  for  it  to 
communicate  with  the  living  (but,  ah!  why 
awaken  the  smiling  dreamer?);  that  it,  in  a 
bodily  shape,  while  of  the  body  as  well  as 
when  recently  not,  can,  possibly,  visit  and 
be  seen  by  the  living.  People  in  general 
are  heedless  of  the  great  work  done  in  these 
days  to  blow  into  flame  the  embers  of  smoul- 
dering faith  in  the  resurrection  of  the  Christ — 
the  Spiritual  Soul  in  the  Spiritual  Body. 

Indeed,  if  your  club  guerilla  wishes  some 
really  recent  refreshment,  you  might  refer  her 
to  The  Life  of  Father  Ignatius^  the  Monk  of 
Llanthony. 

49 


The  Via  Tiberio,  wall-lined,  between  villas 
and  vineyards,  leads  up  by  the  "Caffe  Mar- 
gherita  and  Carolina,"  where  the  Siren, 
Carolina,  "  always  gay,"  greets  this  traveller, 
"who  passeth  by  this  road  so  late"  (or 
early),  with  a  tarantella  carol  from  her 
overlooking  balcony;  while  the  gentle  Evan- 
geline-faced  Margherita  offers  a  bouquet  of 
the  fragrant  narcissus  as  he  reaches  her 
door;  thence  up  by  the  lighthouse — once 
"wont  to  shed  its  rays  sweet  to  anxious 
ships" — and  over  ruined  Tiberian  galleries, 
halls,  amphitheatres,  armories,  and  cisterns, 
until  he  again  finds  the  gentle  hermit,  who, 
having  seen  him  a  long  way  off,  awaits  his 
prodigal.  Neither  falls  on  the  other's  neck 
nor  kisses — although  falling  was  an  ancient 
practice  up  here,  and  kissing  must  not  be 
surprised;  alas,  poor  fisherman!  Yet  one 
might  kiss  the  sweet-faced  old  man  and  be 
forgiven.  I  wonder  if,  half  a  century  ago, 
some  fair  Margherita  was  not  seen  afar  ofi^ 
and,  prodigally,  kissed  and  been  forgiven! 
My  daily,  and  often  nightly,  pilgrimages  to 
my  old  friend,  up  there  on  the  lonely  moun- 
tain under  the  blue  tent  of  God,  have  given 
me  something  to  think  of  at  least. 

5° 


I  was  going  to  tell  you  something  which 
suggested  my  "wonder,"  and  then  I  hesitated 
for  the  space  of  the  last  sentence,  thinking  I 
ought  not  to  tell  tales  out  of  school;  yet  I  can 
trust  you  with  all  my  heart — and  do — why 
not  with  something  of  that  of  another; 
though  I  know  the  sacredness  with  which  you 
treasure  (from  me)  the  secret  of  your  elect 
one!  Besides,  this  is  not  a  secret — simply 
something  occult,  to  the  ignorant — and  may 
be  a  belated  chapter  in  that  "little  story"  I 
told  you  in  my  first  letter.  Last  evening,  as 
the  sun  tarried  over  Monte  Solaro,  and  was 
paying  his  parting  respects  to  the  golden 
Madonna,  to  the  ruins  of  Villa  Jovis  and  the 
little  chapel,  before  seeking  a  shrine  beyond 
the  sea,  I  came  up  for  a  night's  occult  revel 
with  my  Ancient,  and  with  my  kodak,  that 
iconoclast  of  all  the  gods  of  modesty,  sur- 
prised my  dear  old  friend  standing  on  the 
steps  leading  up  to  the  chapel,  and  gazing 
mournfully  and  tenderly  upon  a  tall,  kerchief- 
ed figure  in  white  below,  whose  face  I  could 
not  see  (as  it  was  fixed  on  him),  until,  as  I  ad- 
vanced, she  turned  toward  me.  She  was  old, 
for  her  hair  was  streaked  with  gray;  but 
young,  for  "the  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or 

51 


land,"  effulged  her  face,  and  the  lines  of 
patient  years  fled  away  and  caused  her  to  be 
transfigured.  She  was  straight  and  strong, 
for  she  had  borne  the  heat  and  burden  of  the 
day  of  a  Capri  workwoman;  she  was  glorified, 
for  she  loved!     For  her  was  not  written: 

"There's  a  love  for  a  year,  a  love  for  a  day, 
But  alas  for  the  love  that  lasts  alway!" 

While  she  but  glanced  at  my  coming  upon 
this  innocent  tryst,  she  was  not  ashamed  or 
embarrassed,  but,  turning,  walked  away  with 
the  free  step  and  joyance  of  bearing  of  one 
refreshed  with  the  wine  of  the  spirit  which 
her  threescore  years  and  ten  but  enriched. 
And  he,  a  hermit!  The  extreme  gentleness 
of  my  Abelard,  as  he  greeted  me  and  led  the 
way  to  our  accustomed  seat,  was  enhanced  by 
a  subdued  joyousness.  I  was  so  perplexed 
by  my  self-reproaches  for  untimeliness  in  in- 
vading the  sanctuary  of  the  aged  couple, 
that,  to  try  to  hide  my  confusion  by  the  rule 
of  opposites,  I  was  led  to  ask  the  most  irrel- 
evant and  malapropos  question:  "What  is 
the  genealogy  of  hell  ?"  My  dear  old  friend 
"never  turned  a  hair,"  but  with  the  serenity 

52 


AND       HE.      A       HERMIT!' 


of  a  babe  answered:  "Ah!  hell  is  the  fear  of 
the  future  and  is  born  of  the  past.  Fear  is 
the  mother  of  care;  and  you  know  what  killed 
the  cat." 

"  But  what  was  it  that  feared  r'  I  asked. 

"Ah,"  said  he,  "that's  another  question. 
There  was  something  that  feared:  the  past 
cast  its  shadow,  and  out  of  it  fear  arose,  its 
spectre.  But  what  was  it  evoked  the  ghost  f 
It  was  that  something  which  does  fear,  does 
hope,  grieve,  rejoice,  hate,  love.  It  is  the  I, 
the  ego,  the  soul — call  it  what  you  will — the 
subjective;  the  subliminal;  the  consciousness 
of  consciousness,  the  residuum  of  thought  ex- 
periences; the  sublimate  essence  of  all  our 
emotions,  desires,  personalities;  the  individual 
entity — it  is  the  substance  of  them  all,  the 
Self." 

"  But  what  is  the  origin  of  the  *  substance'  ?" 

"  My  young  friend,"  said  the  old  man,  "  that 
origin  is,  as  the  Jewish  scriptures  have  it, 
'in  the  beginning?'  The  spirit  of  life  per- 
vades all  material  things  (and  I  am  not  saying 
there  is  any  other  than  the  material — that  is, 
substance)  in  the  heavens  above  and  the 
earth  beneath,  in  one  form  or  another. 
That  spirit  of  Life  was  breathed  out  of  the 

53 


Infinite,  the  God,  the  Beginner;  and,  formed 
and  crystalHzed  under  His  law,  by  process  of 
that  law,  evolves  ever  higher  and  more  com- 
plex forms  of  expression  of  that  life,  and 
finally  is  resolved  back  into  Himself,  com- 
pleting the  circle  of  manifestation.  Now 
man,  combining  in  himself  all  the  preceding 
forms,  cannot,  if  he  would,  stop  the  spiral 
climb  of  evolution.  He  must,  by  the  divine 
propulsion,  ever  seek  that  life  more  abun- 
dantly until  he  shall  acquire  what  we  may 
call  a  spiritual  life — the  life  of  the  soul 
as  self-existent.  Can  the  evolution  of  the 
spirit  of  life,  the  life  force,  be  complete  ?  Can 
the  persistence  of  force,  the  conservation  of 
energy,  the  law  of  continuing,  be  exhausted, 
come  to  a  standstill,  in  the  production  of  a 
mere  man-animal } 

"You  may  have  a  personal  God,  an  an- 
thropomorphic God,  if  you  will — if  it  helps 
you  to  comprehend,  in  any  degree,  by  en- 
larging the  proportions  of  the  highest  con- 
ceivable personality,  until  you  may  con- 
template Him  in  all  man-like  perfection — and 
yet  you  will  have  but  a  bare  suggestion  of 
what  may  be  the  All-wise,  the  Beneficent, 
the  Almighty,  the  Only  One.     To  this  end, 

54 


as  helps  to  the  imagination,  man  has  shrined 
his  images;  but  the  old  command  is  upon  the 
wise:  'Thou  shalt  make  no  graven  images.' 
Yet,  can  you  look  up  yonder  at  the  myriad 
stars,  at  the  Milky  Way  —  that  nebula  of 
world -stuff — -at  the  illimitable  spaces  no 
glass  has  yet  pierced,  and  bridle  your  God 
to  this  less  than  an  atom  in  His  universe, 
and  say  that  all  this  was  made  and  per- 
petuated for  a  mere  man-animal  ?" 

The  Aged  One  had  risen,  and,  stretching 
his  arms  aloft  and  abroad,  as  if  to  call  an 
expression  of  his  idea  down  from  the  im- 
mensity, exclaimed:  "Oh,  that  I  might  know 
HimF' 

After  a  contemplative  pause,  he  turned  to 
me  with  folded  arms,  as  if  in  silent  apology, 
and  I  asked: 

"Then  you  have  heard  of  the  Eastern 
doctrine  of  Nirvana  ?" 

"Oh  yes,"  he  answered.  "I  have  had 
several  very  learned  visitors  here  who  be- 
lieved in  it.  Why  should  a  rain-drop  refuse 
to  flow  down  into  the  ocean  .?  We  may  be 
in  accord,  or  at  one,  with  God;  but  patience, 
my  son,  the  Universe  will  be  a  graybeard 
before  you  or  I  shall  be  of  God.     When  we 

55 


can  think  God's  thoughts  (and,  remember, 
you  are  one  of  them),  we  won't  object  to 
become  of  Him;  but,  until  then —  Good- 
night!" 

The  Hermit  sought  to  tell  me  what  hell  is. 
Let  me  give  you  the  geography  of  it — and 
then  some! 

Seers,  poets,  and  saints  have  localized  hell 
and  peopled  an  under-world  with  lost  souls — 
mostly  those  of  their  enemies;  but  they,  and 
even  the  Amiable  Hermit,  had  not  dreamed 
of  a  still  farther  but  easily  accessible  place 
for  the  final  abode  of  sinners.  It  remained 
for  the  Rev.  Obedia  Mashim,  of  the  eight- 
gallon  persuasion,  'way  back  in  the  "airly 
days,"  on  his  return  to  his  congregation,  after 
having  driven  his  hogs  to  market  at  Cin- 
cinnati, and  lingered  there  until  Saturday 
night  to  sell  them  on  a  rising  market,  and 
having  scruples  against  travelling  on  Sunday, 
was  forced  to  remain  in  the  city  over  the  next 
day,  to  describe  the  wrecking  of  the  Moselle 
(April  25,  1838),  and  proclaim  to  his  flock 
upon  his  return  home  a  new  geography  of 
souls.  After  making  his  excuses  for  absence 
on  the  preceding  Sunday,  he  proceeded: 

"I  was  seekin'  some  place  of  worship,  but, 

56 


like  Noah's  dove,  I  found  no  rest  for  my  foot; 
but,  meanderin'  by  the  river-sides,  there  mine 
eyes    beheld    the     new    steamboat    Mosellee 
reposin'    upon   the   bosom   of  the    beautiful 
Ohio,  her  steam  blowin'  off,  her  bells  ringin', 
and  on  the  v^harf  a  vast  crov^d  huzzahin', 
singin',  and  laughin'  as  the  Mosellee  started 
on  her  trial  trip  up  the  river.     Then  a  band 
of  music  desecrated  the  Sabbath  air  v^ith  its 
audacious  goin'  on.     Slowly  she  backed  from 
the  wharf,  and  then  her  great  wheels  churned 
the  waters   like   the    leveeathan   in   his  fury, 
and  she  swum  out  into  the  stream,  a  magnif- 
icent structure  and    a   credit  to  the  city  of 
her  birth.     Then,  let  mine  ears  be  deaf  and 
mine  eyes  blind,   if  I   did   not  hear  fiddlin' 
and   see   dancin'  on   her  deck— aye,   fiddUn' 
and  dancin'  and  laughin'  on  the  Lord's  Day! 
Fiddlin'  and  dancin'!  —  the    men  with  their 
arms  around  the  women!     I  fain  would  have 
turned  mine  eyes  away,  so  full  was  I  of  wrath. 
But  there  was  the  Mosellee^  as  she  swep'  up 
the   river,  the   grand  work  of  men's  hands; 
and  the  sun  in  the  blue  heavens  did  not  cease 
to  shine  on  the  abomination  of  wickedness 
of  that  Sodom  and  Gomorrah  on  her  deck! 
Up  the  river  she  flew  like  a  bird,  and  then 

'  57 


slewed  about  near  the  other  side,  when,  all 
of  a  suddent,  she  explored  her  boilers — ah! 
She  blew  everything  sky-high — ah!  And  all 
that  fiddhn'  and  dancin'  crew — ah!  She  blew 
some  to  heaven  and  some  to  hell  and  some 
clean  away  over  into  Kentucky — ah!" 

And  thus  it  was  that  the  bloody  hunting- 
ground  came  to  be  a  new  locus  umbra  in  the 
world  of  spirits. 

Of  the  three  places  you  have  choice.  In 
heaven  there  is  no  marrying  or  giving  in 
marriage;  in  hell  it  is  too  hot  for  domestic 
tranquillity;  there  remains  Kentucky — with 
you  I'll  risk  her. 

I  fear  your  patience  will  not  endure  what 
to  me  has  become  so  interesting — my  con- 
versations with  my  friend.  You  have  your 
daily  work  (I  hope  it  is  not  labor),  and  I  have 
my  continuing  leisure,  coupled  with  an  old 
habit  of  being  busy — at  something!  You 
may  think  an  "old  man  of  the  sea"  is  riding 
me,  but,  I  assure  you,  it  is  I  who  am  being 
carried  away;  I  only  wish  it  were  to  you. 
But  this  may  not  be,  mea  miserum!  Suppose 
I  join  the  Hermit,  and  "  so  let  the  wide  world 
wag  as  it  will,  we'll  be  gay  and  happy 
still!"      Then    there    would    be    no    hermit, 

58 


only  two  jolly  companions.     I  fear,  however, 
that  would  violate  the  injunction:  "Be  not 
unequally  yoked  together." 
Let  me  say  good-night! 

Faithfully  yours, 


Capri,  Italy,  January  30,   190-. 

My  dear  : 

Yours  of  the  15th  inst.  discloses  you  as  a 
see-er,  a  star  performer  of  a  seance  with 
yourself  as  audience,  solus.  You  appear  to 
have  been  a  shadow-dancer — the  shadow 
your  own. 

You  say  you  are  glad  I  wrote  you  on  the 
24th  ult.,  as  you  had  been  much  alarmed  on 
the  22d  by  seeing  my  spook  at  your  gate. 
You  ran  from  the  veranda,  where  you  had 
tarried  after  bidding  good-night  to  some 
very  late  departing  guests,  and  were  enjoying 
the  clear,  brilliant  light  of  the  moon  in  mid- 
sky,  and,  with  the  soft  south  wind  presaging 
a  green  Christmas,  were  longing  for  a  "cer- 
tain truant"  to  come  home  for  a  Christmas- 

59 


ing,  when  there,  in  full,  palpable  view,  he 
stood!  You  sa}^  you  ''ran  to  meet  him,"' 
and  when  you  got  to  the  gate  he  vanished 
away, 

"The  Snark  was  a  Boogum,  you  see." 
You  hastened  to  the  gate,  looked  up  and 
down  the  street,  but  he  was  nowhere.  It  is 
generally  believed  that  what  you  saw  was 
"another  of  those  things  no  fellow  can  find 
out" — out  of  certain  mysterious  cabinets, 
though 

"You  may  seek  it  with  thimbles  and  seek  it  with 
care; 
You  may  hunt  it  with  forks  and  hope; 
You  may  threaten  its  life  with  a  railroad  share; 
You  may  charm  it  with  smiles  and  soap." 

And  you  did  not  faint!  You  simply  leaned 
on  the  gate-post  and  said:  "He  is  dead." 
You  do  not  give  me  any  of  the  post-mortem 
particulars  —  the  garments  of  woe,  heart- 
breakings,  and  so-forth;  but  it's  gratifying 
to  learn  that  my  letter  of  the  24th  ult.  "was 
a  glad  relief." 

I  knew  a  little  girl  who,  when  it  fell  to  her 
lot  to  wash  the  dishes,  always  sang  with  the 
most  dolorous  psalmistry  that  blasphemous 

60 


hymn-line:  "  I'm  glad  that  I  was  born  to  die." 
She  is  not  dead  yet;  but  she  never  saw  a 
spook!  If  you  really  want  an  explanation  of 
my  manifestation,  I  can  only  suspect:  /  was 
there!  Yet  it  was  "All  in  your  eye,  Betty 
Martin."  Up  there  into  the  cortices  of  your 
gray  matter  "where  is  fancy  bred,"  as  I  sat 
at  the  chapel  door  and  saw  the  moon  going 
down  to  you,  my  thought  of  you  and  myself 
at  the  gate  of  our  parting  projected  itself, 
and  (may  I  be  pardoned  for  imagining)  at 
the  same  time  you  had  a  vision  of  the  same 
sadness:  our  thought  of  each  other  as  we 
once  stood  there,  united,  and  I  was  made 
exteriorly  cognizable  to  you.  You  saw  me 
present,  as  I  was  consciously  thinking  my- 
self to  be.  So,  you  see,  "thoughts  are  things,''^ 
a  mode  of  motion,  between  us  ^.  It  was  all 
on  the  wireless-telegraph  system — finer  and 
farther.  It  represents  the  idea  of  the  near 
invention  of  the  telephonic  picture  of  the 
sender  and  receiver  respectively  appearing 
in  response  to  the  "Hi  loo!"  When  our 
wills,  consciously,  are  able  to  project  our 
thoughts  with  our  images  to  receptive  wait- 
ing members  of  the  New  Telephone  of  Souls, 
call  me  up,  please! 

6i 


I  told  you  of  the  Hermit  and  the  lady  at 
the  chapel  steps  expecting  sympathetic  ap- 
preciation, but  find  you  intimating  a  scandal. 
The  whispered  truth  is  scandalful. 

I  would  not  have  believed  it,  you  inno- 
cent Little  Teacher!  Here  I  have  you,  in 
black  and  white,  a  traitor  to  your  sex!  Or  is 
it  an  overweening  vanity  of  that  same  sex 
with  which  you  write:  "I  knew  there  was  'a 
woman  in  it'!"  Hurrah  for  her,  I  say!  I 
wonder  if  it  was  really  your  prescience  of 
facts  or  a  mere  Eve-itical  instinct  which  dis- 
closed to  you  that  "there  can  be  no  hermit, 
pure  and  simple."  Women  have  a  sort  of 
illusive  intuition;  for  were  not  the  Sibyls, 
the  Delphines,  the  Vestals,  all  women  .?  So 
much  so  that  Woman  has  assumed  to  be  "the 
divinity  that  stirs  within  us" — all  sorts  of 
de-dev-devotion!  Instance:  All  our  sym- 
bols— in  fresco  and  statue,  in  park  and  palace, 
everywhere  —  of  Industry,  Art,  Literature, 
Justice,  Liberty,  Peace,  and — and  War^  are 
Woynen. 

There  is  a  fable  that  when  the  gods  were 
making  woman  and  were  throwing  the  in- 
gredients into  the  caldron,  one  inadvertently 
tossed   in    a   soul — and   thence   came   man's 

62 


toil  and  trouble.  Blessings  on  the  incon- 
sequent young  chap  for  his  carelessness! 
For  he  must  have  been  a  youthful  sport,  in- 
tent on  fun.  Or  may  it  have  been  an  old  'un 
on  mischief  bent — throwing  the  chestnuts 
into  the  fire  that  we  men  might  monkey  with 
the  cat  to  get  them  out  I  The  widow  of 
General  Custer,  in  a  lecture,  said  that  during 
the  Civil  War  she  once  was  invited  to  the 
headquarters  of  the  army  to  witness  the  dis- 
tribution of  medals  to  twenty  soldiers  for 
distinguished  service.  When  the  men  were 
lined  up  to  receive  their  decorations  they 
would  have  passed  muster  as  so  many  pretty 
girls,  they  were  so  young  and  so  blushingly 
handsome;  and,  for  acts,  then  and  there  nar- 
rated by  the  general  commanding  as  each 
was  given  his  insignia,  of  gay  gallantry,  reck- 
less and  loyal  devotion,  patient  suffering,  and 
intrepid  deviltry,  they  deserved  to  be ! 

I  wonder  if  between  fable  and  fact  there  is 
any  relation  of  sequence;  if  so,  it  certainly  was 
the  young  chap! 

You  say  your  work  is  often  labor,  for  as  a 
Teacher  you  are,  in  law,  in  place  of  the 
parents,  a  parent-in-law — you  must  com- 
bine in  one  the  most  heterogeneous  elements. 

63 


The  "old  woman  who  hved  in  a  shoe"  had 
her  blessed  privileges.  You  think  that  as 
the  remedy  for  divorces  is  proposed  to  be 
in  sensible  marriage  laws  requiring  physical 
examinations  for  degenerates,  additionally 
there  should  be  required  of  the  would-be- 
happy  couple  certificates  of  qualification  as 
nurses  and  kindergarten  teachers;  thus  they 
would  be  qualified  to  stand  /«  loco  parentis 
themselves.  I  agree  with  you.  I  think  that 
a  person  who  has  taught  school  for,  say, 
about  ten  years,  would  be  entirely  eligible! 
How  would  it  do  to  establish  reformatories 
for  incorrigible  parents  .''  Also,  provide  kin- 
dergartens for  honeymooners  and  hospitals 
for  divorcees  ? 

I  went  to  the  Hermit  with  your  difficulties 
in  regard  to  rewards  and  punishments,  which 
you  seem  to  have  difficulty  in  distributing  in 
your  school.  You  wish  me  to  discover  for 
you  "the  rod  that  chasteneth  without  chastis- 
ing," and  to  tell  you  "how  spoiled  the  rod 
should  be  to  spare  the  child." 

The  Hermit  never  argues,  never  disputes. 
He  listens  and  he  talks;  who  am  I  to  inter- 
locute  ?  I  stated  your  case,  and  then  tried 
to  have  ears  to  hear,  but  I  doubt  if  I  shall 

64 


be  able  to  lend  them  to  you.  He  talked  as 
if  alone:  *'As  a  fact,  I  do  not  think  God  ever 
punishes.  Punishment  for  sin  is  a  mis- 
nomer— the  invention  of  man.  We  see  a 
consequence  of  what  we  call  wrong-doing, 
and  we  say  it  is  a  reward  or  a  punishment. 
There  is  neither  reward  nor  punishment  in 
God's  purpose.  In  it  there  is  only  cause  and 
effect — justice — justice  inexorable.  There  is 
no  escape  from  it.  There  is  no  such  thing  as 
mercy  either — mercy  in  the  sense  of  relief 
from  the  effect  of  wrong-doing  on  the  doer. 
I  know  this  is  shocking  to  one  who  has  re- 
garded only  man  and  his  mode  of  govern- 
ment. Indeed,  our  legal  punishments  are 
not  justice  at  all.  You  say:  'Let  us  temper 
justice  with  mercy.'  Yes,  let  us.  We  are 
fallible:  we  do  not  know  all.  We  administer 
justice  like  we  do  medicine — afflict  the  patient, 
hoping  that  Nature  will  hear  the  cry  for  help. 
Our  penal  statutes  are  hostile  provisions  for 
the  safety  of  the  social  body,  for  the  welfare 
of  every  other  than  the  criminal.  The  so- 
called  effect  of  sin  against  man's  laws  is  arti- 
ficial; it  is  not  caused  by  but  merely  follows 
disobedience.  We  put  a  man  in  prison,  or 
take  his  property  from  him,  or  kill  him;  it  is 

65 


not  even  an  eye  for  an  eye,  a  tooth  for  a 
tooth.  The  punishment  does  not  fit  the 
crime,  simply  because  we  cannot  create  a 
natural  effect  from  the  artificial  cause. 
Society,  as  such,  is  not  responsible  for  the 
sins  of  men,  save  as  the  result  of  such  sins 
hurts  the  whole  or  some  member  of  the 
system.  It  is  even  deemed  justifiable  to  in- 
flict the  severest  penalties  upon  a  culprit  as  an 
example  to  deter  others  from  committing 
crime.  This  is  the  old  idea  of  the  scapegoat 
bearing  the  sins  of  the  people  into  the  wilder- 
ness— without  consulting  the  goat  or  the 
wilderness!  It  is  in  line  with  the  counsel  of 
Caiaphas,  the  high  priest,  that  it  was '  expedient 
that  one  man  should  die  for  the  people';  in 
accordance  with  which  the  Holy  Nazarene 
was  murdered,  obsequious  to  the  expediency 
of  the  law.  Christ  dealt  with  the  individual. 
'Love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself  is  for  the  hap- 
piness of  the  loving,  the  effect  on  the  neighbor 
is  the  incident.  Until  within  a  few  years, 
before  we  had  reformed  the  law^s  a  little,  if 
you  saw  a  man  judicially  hanged  by  the 
neck,  you  could  not  say  whether  he  had 
stolen,  counterfeited  the  coin  of  the  realm, 
smuggled  a  keg  of  brandy,  rebelled  against 

66 


the  king,  refused  to  attend  church,  or  was  a 
bigamist  or  a  murderer.  And  now,  if  you 
visit  a  penitentiary,  you  cannot  say  of  any 
convict  there  what  offence  he  has  committed. 
But,  in  nature,  not  a  flower  blooms  or  wind 
blows  for  which  there  is  not  a  sure  and 
adequate  cause.  It  is  easy,  after  the  event, 
to  say  that  Sodom  and  Gomorrah  were 
punished  by  fire  from  heaven  for  Sin;  but 
Christ  said:  'Those  eighteen  upon  whom  the 
tower  of  Siloam  fell  and  slew  them,  think 
ye  that  they  were  sinners  above  all  that  dwelt 
in  Jerusalem  .?  I  tell  you,  Nay.'  It  might  as 
well  be  said  of  Pompeii  and  Herculaneum, 
that  fires  rained  down  from  heaven  and 
destroyed  them  as  punishment  for  sin.  V\'e 
know  they  perished  in  an  eruption  of  Mount 
Vesuvius,  which  had  from  time  immemorial 
emitted  flames  and  lava  threatening  them. 
They  were  pagan  in  all  things  of  worship. 
They  chose  to  live  under  a  volcano  and  suf- 
fered the  consequences.  Let  us  not  forget 
that  there  are  ethical  causes  which  may  pro- 
duce physical  effects.  The  low,  voluptuous 
worship  of  the  Pompeians  was  one  of  the 
first  nature-religions  of  man.  Physical  lux- 
uriousness  selected  their  place  of  abode,  and 

67 


in  sympathy  with  riotous  nature  they  revelled 
in  contiguity  to  the  primeval,  the  passional 
heat  of  the  fruitful  slope  of  the  burning  moun- 
tain. Spiritual  depravity  and  animal  desire 
w^ere  associated  w^ith  cosmic  fertility  and  un- 
rest. The  good  often  escape;  they  heed 
w^arnings.  There  may  be  angels — moral 
forces — to  warn  the  good;  for  goodness  in  its 
receptivity,  its  obedience  to  spiritual  sug- 
gestion, is  in  the  line  of  Godward  progress. 
But  natural  causes  produce  natural  effects, 
and  a  good  man  may  die  of  apoplexy  in  his 
tribune.  If  he  had  been  wise  in  knowledge 
of  his  disease  he  might  have  lived  longer, 
and,  probably,  he  had  lived  long  by  reason 
of  his  obedience  to  suggestion.  Mere  good- 
ness does  not  change  the  laws  of  the  universe, 
but  by  obeying  them  one  has  length  of  days. 
A  man  by  taking  thought  may  not  add  a 
cuhit  to  his  stature,  but  he  may  add  an  inch 
or  two.  While  all  I  have  heretofore  said  is 
true,  you  must  know  that  there  is  a  repentance 
and  an  obtaining  mercy,  in  the  sense  that 
ceasing  to  do  evil  and  learning  to  do  good  is 
obtaining  mercy  —  is  a  coming  into  a  non- 
sinning  state.  That  man  is  able  to  repent, 
to  turn   from  doing  evil,   is  itself  a  mercy. 

68 


Ihat  one  can  turn  Godward,  can  love  his 
neighbor  as  himself,  can  love  the  Supreme,  is 
a  mercy.  One  may  not  escape  the  effect  of 
past  sinning  by  repentance,  but  that  effect 
will  be  better  borne;  no  more  seed  being  sown, 
the  harvest  of  evil  will  be  cut  short;  and 
although  tares  may  appear  in  the  harvest, 
the  wheat  will  be  sufficient  to  rejoice  in;  be- 
sides, good  is  a  more  fertile  seed  than  evil. 
It  rains  on  the  just  and  the  unjust,  but  the 
just  receive  the  gifts  of  God  with  fruit- 
bearing  hands. 

"This  rule  of  cause  and  effect — this  equal 
working  of  the  laws  of  nature,  the  com- 
pensatory adjustment  of  all  forces — does  not 
shut  out  the  fact  (the  law)  that  the  wise  may 
cause  Nature  to  work  effects  by  the  use  of 
her  laws,  as  the  smith  heats  the  iron  and 
hammers  it  into  such  shape  as  he  wills.  So 
Christ  healed  the  sick;  so,  by  the  power  of 
the  law  of  faith.  He  survived  the  crucifixion. 
Nothing  happens.  Ignorance,  knowing  no 
law  of  expectancy,  says:  'It  happens.'  Nor 
does  the  rule  deny  that  'the  prayer  of  the 
righteous  availeth  much,'  for  the  faith- 
begetting  prayer  of  the  righteous  is  a  force, 
a  dynamic  force  in  nature.     It  stirs  the  vital 

69 


influences  to  healing.  It  is  the  telegraphic 
wire  between  the  spirit  of  man  and  the  forces 
in  nature.  Given  the  same  faithful  prayer 
by  an  equally  righteous  one,  and  the  same 
result  of  healing  will  follow  as  an  effect  of 
the  same  cause.  The  mighty  works  of  the 
prophets  of  old  are  not  now  seen  simply  be- 
cause the  prophets  are  not — are  not  seen  ?  All 
this  is  but  asserting  the  power  of  the  spirit 
within  man,  the  rule  of  the  spiritual  law  over 
matter,  to  set  in  motion  the  forces  of  nature. 
What  we  now  generally  do  is  to  drill  the  body 
and  exercise  the  mind  in  order  to  feed  and 
clothe  the  body.  We  invent  wants,  and  spend 
our  lives  gratifying  them.  No  wonder  the 
prophets  are  not  born  of  us.  We  breed  cattle 
and  kings,  but  not  prophets  or  seers.  We 
pray  for  riches  and  things  of  sense,  which 
are  to  be  worked  for.  The  man  who  deter- 
mines to  be  rich  can  be  rich;  the  law  gives 
him  the  pound  of  flesh,  but  the  life  of  the 
Spirit  is  not  his.  We  can  and  do  sow  for 
riches  and  harvest  them;  they  perish  with 
the  using,  but  there  is  a  sowing  of  wise 
endeavor  and  joy  which  enricheth  with  the 
using." 

When  my  old  friend  had  ceased,  I  asked 

70 


him:  "What  of  one's  past  sins  ?  What  is  one 
to  do  with  them  ?" 

With  a  look  of  utter  weariness,  he  answered : 
"Sins?  There  are  sins  and  sins!  Whatever 
they  are,  coddle  them  not,  nor  bedevil  them, 
'Go  and  sin  no  more,'  and,  by  all  means,  go! 
Bandage  your  bruised  feet  and — forget  them! 
Displace  the  thou-shalt-nots  of  Moses  with 
the  affirmations  of  Christ!  Don'ts  are  rocks 
of  stumbling — they  suggest  offence,  as  'the 
strength  of  sin  is  the  law.' " 

Don't  you  think  my  Seer  is  correct  m  hold- 
ing that  Society  should  exist  only  for  the  pro- 
tection of  its  members — for  self-preservation, 
not  for  vengeance  ?  Percival  Lowell  has 
said  that  "politeness  is  the  social  art  of  living 
agreeably  with  one's  fellows."  The  criminal 
must  be  taught  politeness.  If  he  cannot  love 
his  neighbor  as  himself,  he,  at  least,  must  not 
be  disagreeable;  if  he  won't  be  polite,  he  must 
be  restrained  from  evil  until  he  learns  to  do 
good,  although  Society  cannot  compel  him  to 
be  good:  for,  after  all,  he  must  punish  himself. 
It  is  said:  "The  suicide  is  one  who  meets  his 
executioner  and  slays  him."  Every  man 
must  meet  his  besetting  sin  and  starve  it  to 
death.     The  preacher  ends  his  sermon  with 

71 


an  "application,"  the  fabulist  with  a  moral; 
one  criminal  I  know  of  is  a  prisoner  of  Capri, 
trying  to  reform  himself;  but  the  more  he 
tries,  the  more  he  is  beset;  the  more  he  starves, 
the  hungrier  he  is.  Please  pardon  the  per- 
sonal application  and  forego  the  moral,  for 
I  am  afraid  to  meet  my  executioner— lest  she 
slay  me.  I  fear,  however,  that  my  sin  has 
found  me  out  (in  the  sense  of  discovery,  not 
escape),  when  in  your  last  note  you  say: 
"Men  have  said  they  loved  me,  and  some  I 
believed."  It  is  a  satisfaction  to  know  that 
you  have  not,  with  Job,  said  in  your  heart 
that  "all  men  are  liars."  That  "some"  may 
cover  a  multitude  of  sinners,  "of  whom  I  am 
chief."  I  merely  quote  St.  Paul  and  de- 
mand the  proof,  for  I  never  have  said  it,  yet —  f 
However,  I  was  troubled  when  you  added: 
"I  have  had  a  bitter  disappointment."  There 
you  stop!  Don't  you  think,  this  time,  that 
it  is  you  who  should  "explain  yourself"? 
I  have  read  that  sentence  over  so  often  that, 
in  my  colloquies  with  my  Hermit,  when  I 
tried  to  listen,  so  as  to  write  you  of  what 
you  style  "his  religions"  (you  seem  to  think 
he  has  several),  I  have  become  a  disappoint- 
ment myself.     I  resent  anything  which  is  a 

72 


cause  of  pain  to  you.  If  any  person  has  dis- 
appointed you,  I  shall  certainly  doubt  if  my 
Seer  is  correct  in  his  views  of  punishment. 
My  politeness,  too,  has  its  limit.  Your  trust 
is  not  sufficiently  alive  to  impel  you  to  confide 
your  trouble  to  me,  as  of  old.  I  have  sinned 
and  come  short  of  the  high  calling  of  friend- 
ship, or  something,  which  used  to  make  a 
partnership  of  our  hopes,  fears,  and  trials. 
It  cannot  be  that  your  Mr.  Call  is  a  disap- 
pointment— although  the  bitterness  of  him 
I  have  had  reason  to  know.  You  cannot  have 
failed  as  the  Little  Teacher — that  is  im- 
possible. I  try  to  think  you  have  exaggerated 
something  trivial,  which  to  your  sensitive 
conscience  is  a  mountain;  but  you  are  not 
given  to  misjudge.  It  is  all  a  puzzle — a 
puzzle!  I  can  only  wait,  and  hope  I  also 
serve.  Meanwhile,  to  cease  from  troubling, 
I  shall  earnestly  devote  myself  to  learn  all 
I  can  from  the  lips  of  my  philosopher  and 
friend ;  although  your  "  bitter  disappointment " 
has  caused  me  to  feel  that  Tom  Moore's  lines, 

"Here  bring  your  wounded  hearts,  here  tell  your 
anguish, 
Earth  has  no  sorrow  that  Heaven  cannot  heal," 

6  73 


do  not  apply  to  Capri  after  all,  for  heaven's 
not  a  place,  but,  like  it  is  said  of  our  Athens: 
"Boston  is  not  a  place,  but  a  state  of  mind." 
Faithfully  yours, 


Capri,  Italy,  February  28,  190-. 


My  dear 


jjC  sK  •(*  *!•  T* 

Again  and  again  I  recall  that,  during  that 
last  walk  and  talk  we  had  together  on  the  eve 
of  my  departure — a  talk  so  rosemaryed  for 
me — you  said:  "I  want  to  be  doing  some- 
thing in  the  world,  to  be  in  fellowship  of 
experience  with  my  kind." 

There  is  an  old  mystic  fable  that  the  gods 
first  made  man  "male  and  female"  (as  the 
literal  reading  of  Genesis  states  it),  but  that, 
by  reason  of  the  arrogance  of  this  self-suf- 
ficient, parthenogenetic  creature,  in  its  per- 
fect self  capable  of  peopling  the  world  and 
defying  its  makers,  these  same  gods  repented 
that  they  had  made  man  and  divided  this 
vain  work  of  their  hands.  Thereupon  the 
halves,  perplexed,  in  perpetual  lament,  went 

74 


about  the  world  in  search  of  each  other,  and 
were  so  occupied  in  their  quest  they  let  the 
gods  eat  their  ambrosia  in  peace;  yet,  being 
often  deceived  by  similarities,  by  appear- 
ances, by  impatient  desires  (wanting  to  be 
doing  something  in  the  world),  they  united 
in  marriage  to  find  that  they  were  joined  to 
strangers!  And  thus  the  divergence  from 
their  original  oneness  continued,  until,  even 
if  the  hapless  halves  finally  united,  their 
experiences  meantime  with  their  mismates 
had  so  impressed  the  images  of  the  latter 
upon  the  originals  they  could  hardly  dis- 
tinguish their  own  true-love  selves.  Hence 
the  proverb:  "The  course  of  true-love  never 
did  run  smooth."  Yet,  once  in  a  while,  now 
and  then,  they  came  together  with  instant 
recognition,  amid  great  rejoicing,  and  "lived 
happily  ever  after." 

Whether  this  is  all  a  mere  allegory,  or  an 
accounting  after  the  fact  for  unhappy  mar- 
riages, I  leave  you  to  determine,  to  decide 
whether  he — the  unknown  (I  wish  he  were 
Mwknown) — is  that  other  half,  the  only  one 
in  the  universe  for  whom  you  can  make  the 
sacred  sacrifice  of  individual  liberty,  interests, 
likes,  and  even  name!     True,  we  have  our 

75 


desires,  passions,  which  cry  out  to  be  satis- 
fied. We  are  prone  to  sacrifice;  proud  to 
vanity  to  be  able  to  give,  since  giving  implies 
in  us  a  surplus  of  riches.  We  "want  to  be 
doing  something  in  the  world"  in  the  order 
of  inherited  nature — to  obey  the  sentence  of 
the  law  adjudged  on  Adam,  as  an  effective, 
not  a  punishment,  for  his  disobedience:  for 
"in  Adam's  fall  we  sinned  all." 

By -the -way,  according  to  the  account, 
Adam  was  no  gentleman;  he  was  the  first  cad. 
He  told  tales  out  of  school;  he  kissed  and  told, 
and,  if  the  truth  were  known,  he  doubtless 
lied!  The  Nazarene,  it  is  said,  was  "the 
first  true  gentleman  that  ever  breathed." 
He  was  the  first  in  quality — the  Spiritual 
Aristocrat;  Prince  of  All  the  Humanities. 
The  first  gentleman  of  the  Old  Testament, 
in  point  of  time,  was  Abimelech,  a  king  of 
the  Philistines,  who  dwelt  in  Gerar. 

How  to  reverse  the  judgment  visited  on  our 
first  parents  has  been  a  world's  puzzle.  Some 
have  kicked  against  the  goads  and  broke  the 
entail  by  a  common  recovery,  have  volun- 
tarily abdicated  manhood  and  womanhood 
to  escape,  have  side-stepped  to  avoid  the 
blow,  and  are  saints!     Yet  the  vestal  mother 

76     . 


of  Romulus  and  Remus  was  burled  alive, 
and  "nephews"  have  been  numerous.  Single- 
blessedness  in  such  case  was  the  failure;  yet 
marriage  is  declared  by  some  socialists  to  be  a 
monopoly!  The  latter  seem  to  seek  some 
indeterminate-sentence  method  to  modify  the 
judgment  for  Adam's  fall.  Had  we  not  better 
seek  a  reversal  of  the  transgressive  force  of 
our  first  progenitors  by  the  generation  of  a 
second  Spiritual  Adam;  and  so  find  a  com- 
pensation, if  not  a  satisfaction  .?  Can  we  not 
take  the  consequences  and  rejoice  in  it  ? 
Can't  we  Adamites  eat  our  bread  in  the 
sweat  of  our  brows  and  joy  in  the  work,  and 
you  Eveites  bear  the  children  of  mated  true- 
love,  not  the  offspring  of  convenience  or  of 
the  fierce  cries  of  Edenic  desire,  and  so  breed 
temples  for  souls  ? 

You  have  heard  the  song  of  the  seventeen- 
year  locust,  the  Cicada  ?  The  egg-child  falls, 
a  speck  of  down,  from  its  cradle  in  the  tender 
branch  of  the  tree,  its  orphanage  home,  and 
burrows  far  into  the  ground,  where  it  sum- 
mers and  winters  itself  as  a  worm,  and  then 
a  beetle,  until  seventeen  years  have  passed. 
Then  on  the  very  day,  the  hour  appointed, 
through  all  the  under- world  the  prophesied 

77 


reveille  summons  from  under  every  green 
tree  in  the  land  the  now  armored  host  of 
Cicadae  to  arise  and  fight  its  battle  up  to 
sunshine  and  the  renew^al  of  its  race.  It 
marches,  assaults,  and  storms  the  barricading 
earth  walls  and  is  in  Eden!  There  it  hangs 
its  spears  and  shields  on  the  rough  bark  of 
the  trees,  emerges  from  its  coat  of  mail — a 
legion  of  winged  Cupids,  an  army  of  Amorites. 
Embowered  on  every  leafy  twig  the  trouba- 
dour serenades  the  lady  of  his  love,  until  the 
forest  resounds  with  the  palpitating  refrain: 

"I  live  for  love,  for  love  I  die." 
He  tarries  with  her  a  few  days,  and  then 

"The  shrilling  locust  slowly  sheathes 
His  dagger  voice  and  creeps  away 
Beneath   the  brooding  leaves  where   breathes 
The  zephyr  of  the  dying  day," 

and  v/ith  it  dies. 

His  lady-love  lays  her  eggs  in  the  nest- 
cradle  carved  by  her  in  the  tender  twigs  of 
the  tree,  and,  having  fulfilled  the  law  by 
giving  her  life  that  the  Cicadas  shall  not 
perish   from   the  earth,   she  also  dies.     The 

78 


Cicada  has  been  transmitted  for  another 
life-round.  Within  forty-two  days  from  the 
moment  of  the  sortie  of  the  army  of  crusad- 
ers in  the  cause  of  the  Hfe  more  abundantly 
not  a  martyr  remains,  and  the  grove  is  silent 
once  more  —  silent  for  another  seventeen 
years. 

"Fear  ye  not,  therefore;  ye  are  of  more 
value  than  many  CtcadcB."  For  Psyche  is 
thine. 

If  man — Man! — has  arisen  from  the  dust 
to  become  the  prince  of  all  animal  life,  to  hold 
in  his  hands  the  power  of  life  and  death  over 
all  animate  things,  is  there  not  in  him  a  higher 
destiny  yet  in  the  eternal  progress  of  Life  ? 
Must  he  be  satisfied  with  the  gratification  of 
the  animal  impulse  to  "multiply  and  re- 
plenish" ?  True  it  is  that  nature  has  spread 
all  its  decoys  to  allure  and  its  nets  to  capture 
every  amorous  Cupid.  The  humblest  flower 
as  well  as  the  proudest  oak  puts  forth  in- 
numerable germs  of  life  to  reproduce  other 
flowers,  other  oaks;  the  very  stones  do  "cry 
out  to  raise  seed  to  Abraham."  Nature  runs 
to  seed-bearing.  Every  sense  is  appealed  to 
and  seems  to  have  been  evolved  for  the  pur- 
pose of  embodying  life.     Pollen  and  stigmata 

79 


call  to  each  other;  the  lions  of  the  mountain 
roar;  the  vegetable  invites  the  animal  and  the 
mineral  the  vegetable  world  to  assist;  every 
atom  in  the  universe  runs  to  and  fro  in  an 
agony  of  motion:  all  seeking  life  more  abun- 
dantly. 

Yet  shall  Man  remain  King  of  Beasts  only  ? 
After  all,  is  not  this  inbred  impulse,  desire, 
passion  to  perpetuate,  a  corollary  to  the  uni- 
versal law  of  the  persistence  of  force,  and 
argues  an  inherent  impulsion  toward  ever- 
lasting existence  ? 

What  are  you  not  doing  in  the  world  ? 
The  young  woman,  through  her  instinct  of 
unexpended  motherhood,  is  the  natural  teacher 
of  children,  while  man  teaches  from  his  pro- 
pensity for  mastery.  In  the  appeal  of  help- 
less childhood  to  the  sympathies  of  woman 
is  the  birth  of  altruism;  and  now,  when  the 
schoolmaster  is  abroad,  it  is  the  schoolmis- 
tress who  is  at  home.  She  is  discovering 
herself — the  quasi  mother  of  the  great  here- 
after. 

It  is  Inazo  Nitobe,  who,  in  his  Bushido;  or. 
Soul  of  Japan,  says:  "When  character  and 
not  intelligence,  when  the  soul  and  not  the 
head,   is   chosen   by   a   teacher  for  the  ma- 

80 


terial  to  work  upon  and  develop,  his  voca- 
tion partakes  of  a  sacred  character.  'It  is 
the  parent  who  has  borne  me;  it  is  the  teacher 
who  makes  me  man.'" 

I  know  of  a  boy  with  his  diploma  from  the 
University,  who,  when  asked  by  his  father,  a 
minister  of  the  Gospel,  what  he  had  chosen 
for  his  life-work,  answered:  "Father,  I  can't 
make  a  minister  out  of  myself."  To  which 
the  reverend  gentleman,  laying  his  hand  on 
his  boy's  head,  replied:  "Ah,  no,  my  son;  it 
is  God  who  makes  ministers  of  the  Gospel." 

So  it  is  of  a  woman-teacher,  who,  with 
pure,  exalted  ideals  of  being  and  living, 
hears  the  cry  of  the  coming  need  and  stress  of 
her  people,  with  Jephtha's  daughter,  answers: 
"Here  am  I,  a  willing  sacrifice,"  and  denies 
her  personal  self  in  fulfilling  the  answer. 
Such  was  once  your  intrepid  answer,  while 
here  am  I,  pedicled  to  "the  wandering  foot." 

There  is  no  altruism  in  fact,  for  in  the 
scales  of  nature  there  are  compensations 
against  every  deprivation.  Yet  can  there  be 
any  greater  self-denial  for  a  woman  to  forego 
than  the  inherited  demand  of  motherhood 
that  she  may  minister  to  the  crying  needs  of 
virtually  parentless  children — children  whose 

8i 


future,  and  the  future  of  Society  as  well,  de- 
pend upon  the  self-denying  care  of  the  teacher 
in  the  public  schools  ?  And,  if  foregoing  the 
personal  longing  to  love  and  be  loved  by  one 
alone,  there  must  come  to  that  teacher  the 
satisfaction  of  having  done  something  in  the 
world,  of  having  entered  into  the  loving  life 
of  hundreds  of  her  pupils,  who  shall  rise  up 
and  call  her  blessed  ?  The  teacher  rocks  the 
cradle  of  the  future  of  her  people.  The 
true-born  teacher  has  heard  the  coming,  com- 
ing heralds  of  her  nation's  progress,  and  all 
the  babes  of  promise  leap  within  her  at  the 
sound  of  their  announcing  bugles.  With 
Zeph,  the  old  black  seer,  she  cries:  "The 
blood  ansahs;  I'se  bawn  with  a  caul!  I'se 
bawn  with  a  caul!" 

I  hope  you  will  pardon  me  for  giving  that 
significance  to  the  concluding  sentence  of 
your  last  letter  which  its  occultness  deserves. 
Let  me  repeat  it:  "Please  don't  trouble  your- 
self about  'your  Mr.  Call.'  'Speak  for 
yourself,  John.'"  Now,  it  strikes  me  that 
"your  Mr.  Call"  (forgive  the  mention  of  him 
by  me  this  last  time)  is  set  upon  a  pedestal, 
a  dodo  on  a  consecrated  altar  dedicated  to 
silence.     In  the  awed  hush  of  your  worship 

82 


of  his  saintship  his  is  the  "lost  name" — 
unutterable  by  my  profane  lips.  You  mean 
that  I,  wicked,  must  cease  from  troubling  and 
give  him  (and  you)  a  rest.  I  am  to  speak 
for  myself,  as  I  am  no  prophet  for  your  most 
high  and  mighty  sacredness,  your  little  tin 
god!  Your  meaning  is  plain,  though  under 
covert  of  the  quotation-marks  to  screen  the 
rebuke.  You  omit  from  the  quotation  the 
present  inquisitive,  "Why  don't  you  V — pre- 
ferring the  imperative  to  suit  your  mood. 
Although  I  accord  you  all  the  graces,  purity, 
and  loveliness  of  Priscilla,  I  have  not  the 
courage  to  be  as  modest  as  John  Alden. 
li'ou  never,  never  (were  you  X)  so  impatient 
with  me,  and  1,  no  doubt,  deserved  to  be — to 
be — reprimanded!  Well,  in  your  heaven 
this  wicked  one  shall  cease  from  troubling, 
and  in  my  Capri  the  weary  shall  be  at  rest — 
I  hope.  I  shall  try  to  be  content  with  the 
memory  of  our  dear  old  companionship  of 
thought  and  sympathy — the  communion  of 
the  saints,  one  of  whom  I  always  hold  you, 
though  I  am  far  from  being  another,  except 
under  your  halo. 

In  the  case  at  bar   I   have  a  client,  but, 
though  I  have  always  fought  to  the  last  ditch 

83 


for  my  clients,  now  an  ancient  maxim  of  the 
legal  profession  warns  against  a  foolish 
championship  of  his  cause  by  me;  therefore 
let  me  flee  to  the  mountain,  to  my  dear  old 
Hermit,  and  to  that  ever-fond  kinship  with 
you    in    things    spiritual   which    hallows    my 

rest. 

Faithfully  yours, 


Capri,  Italy,  March  7,   190-. 


My  dear 


I  am  sorry  if  anything  in  my  last  letter 
offended  you — you  do  not  mention  my  out- 
break against  the  nameless  one;  and  that  is 
ominous  (I  might  say  "omni-ous"),  for  your 
letter,  now  before  me,  seems  as  if  cut  short  by 
a  frost.  But  frosted  cake  is  all  the  sweeter, 
and  the  sweetness  of  your  cake  is  in  your  in- 
quiry: "When  are  you  coming  home?" 
The  inference  is  that  I  should  come,  though 
you  assign  no  reason  why.  There  is  only 
one  reason  which  could  appeal  to  me,  and 
that  is  too  unreasonable  for  me  to  think  of. 

84 


**In  Capri's  land  I'll  take  my  stand, 
And  live  and  die  in  Capri!" 

For  I  find  this  hospitable  southland  is  most 
interesting — to  me.  Though  it  is  of  stone,  its 
heart  is  mysteriously  tender.  It  has  had  its 
tragedy,  even  in  later  times.  It  is  said  that, 
in  a  raid  by  a  band  of  Saracens  from  across 
the  narrow  sea,  some  years  ago,  when  it  land- 
ed to  rob,  and  to  rapt  the  fair  women  for 
their  harems  and  the  children  for  the  Tunis- 
ian slave-market,  the  inhabitants,  as  of  old, 
sought  the  security  of  the  cavern  under  the 
old  castle  on  Castiglione.  The  cavern,  or 
grotto,  is  approached  by  a  foot -wide  path 
along  the  face  of  a  bare  cliff  several  hundred 
feet  above  the  sea,  where  one  person  at  the 
entrance  of  the  cave  has  only  to  push  the 
intruder  a  hand's-breadth  to  hurl  him  down 
the  abyss.  Most  of  the  people  had  made 
their  entry  into  safety,  when  one  young  man 
at  the  beginning  of  the  path  tarried  to  ward 
off  the  pursuers  from  a  beautiful  young 
woman  who  was  about  to  enter  the  narrow 
passage.  He  chivalrously  held  them  at  bay 
until  "Heloise"  escaped  into  the  cavern,  but 
her  defender  and  rescuer  himself  fell  victim, 

85 


overpowered  by  numbers,  and  was  left  man- 
gled and  for  dead  on  the  mountain-side. 

Whether  or  not  this  incident  has  any  rela- 
tion to  my  "little  story"  of  the  organist  and 
the  lady,  I  will  repeat  what  my  informant 
said:  "We  know  very  little,  suspect  a  great 
deal,  guess  at  some  things."  While  I  cannot 
ask  my  Hermit,  for  there  is  about  him  a  silent 
forbidding  of  personalities  as  too  trivial  for 
consideration,  yet  I  believe — I  dream,  per- 
haps— that  my  saintly  friend  who  so  brave- 
ly champions  Psyche  would  not  hesitate  to 
face  an  army  of  Saracens  in  defence  of  a 
woman. 

During  this  same  raid  a  little  shoemaker 
was  pegging  his  way  up  the  steeps  toward 
the  cavern  when  overtaken  by  the  raiders, 
and  was  by  them  carried  oversea  a  prisoner. 
His  bereaved  wife,  with  her  "nine  small 
children  and  one  at  the  breast,"  pleaded 
with  the  good  church  people  of  Capri  to  ran- 
som him.  In  a  year  or  two  the  money  was 
sent,  and  the  son  of  Crispin  was  returned 
and  received  with  joy  and  fatted  chickens. 
He  seemed  pleased  with  his  reception,  and, 
in  his  character  as  Munchausen,  he  reflected 
honor  on  the  original  until  he  began  to  believe 

86 


his  own  fairy  tales,  was  reduced  to  the  neck 
of  the  chickens,  and  was  "on  his  uppers" 
— to  speak  professionally.  Alas,  one  morn- 
ing he  was  missing!  He  had  learned  the 
trick.  He  had  "folded  his  tent  like  the 
Arabs  and  as  silently  stole  away" — to  get  his 
share  of  the  ransom  and  rejoice  his  two 
Saracen  wives,  fulfilling  the  adage  of  his  trade : 
"Let  the  shoemaker  stick  to  his  last." 

Notv.ithstanding  the  pie-crustian  short- 
ness of  your  last  note  (you  had  "no  time  to 
write  a  letter"),  yet  it  was  long  on  recondite 
inquiries.  You  "wish  to  know  what  the 
Hermit  means  by  saying  that  the  resurrection 
of  Christ  was  a  proof  of  the  essential  quality 
of  the  Spirit,  the  Spiritual  Soul — the  Christ 
within  us";  and  you  also  "wish  to  learn  what 
he  knows  of  the  relation  of  the  Spirit  to  the 
Animal-Man."  Yet  I  have  been  hinting 
that  yours  was  a  short  note! 

Although  I  cannot  question  my  Aged 
One  about  his  younger  life,  I  have  continued 
to  inquire,  and  he  has  continued  to  respond, 
concerning  the  life  spiritual  in  which  he  is 
almost  wholly  absorbed,  and  from  time  to 
time  his  responses  have  fallen  into  the  lines 
which    I    have   tried    to    remember,    and   in 

87 


which  I  hope  you  will  find,  in  some  sort,  a 
solution  of  the  problems  you  present.  To 
begin  with,  the  other  evening  he  made  a 
resume  of  the  whole  subject  of  matter  and 
spirit,  I  was  glad  to  listen,  and  now  am  the 
more  so,  because  it  may  help  you  as  an 
answer  to  your  note  of  inquiries. 

He  began:  "What  is  mind  }  The  simplest 
exposition  is,  that  Mind  is  a  result.  Thought 
is  born  of  the  Spirit  and  Matter.  Given  the 
Spirit  and  the  Animal-Man,  the  former 
acting  in  and  upon,  or,  as  some  say,  over- 
shadowing the  latter,  engenders  an  activity 
of  perception,  cognition,  with  consequent 
association  of  the  informations  obtained,  by 
comparison,  contrast,  reasoning;  and  thus 
man  has  a  mind,  memory,  knowledge.  Mind 
thus  becomes  the  instrument  through  which 
the  soul  takes  cognizance  of  things,  experi- 
ments with  matter.  It  is  the  antennae  with 
which  the  soul  seeks  nutriment. 

"  So  our  thoughts  are  born.  They  depend 
upon  the  heredity  both  of  our  overshadowing 
spirit  and  of  our  bodies.  We  may  escape  the 
easy,  indolent  following  of  the  mere  animal 
desires  by  giving  the  lead  to  the  spirit,  de- 
veloping the  consciousness  of  it,  bringing  it 

88 


by  a  life  of  work  and  faith  to  be  an  ever- 
abiding  presence  witliin,  so  that  it  becomes  no 
longer  an  'overshadowing,'  an  'over-soul,' 
but  an  active  'Christ  within  us,  the  hope  of 
glory';  an  existing  quality — not  quantity — 
of  Eternal  Life.  Denying  Fate,  we  weave 
our  Destiny — the  certain  jfinal  effect  of  ef- 
ficient causes. 

"Our  destiny  is  in  our  own  hands,  if  we 
have  the  will  to  do  our  Master's  will.  The 
Spirit  ever  stands  at  the  door  and  knocks. 
Conscience  is  the  latch.  Every  one  can  open 
the  door  by  lifting  the  latch — if  he  will. 
Jesus — the  exemplified  Christ  for  us — stood 
among  us,  divine  in  and  because  of  the  per- 
fection of  the  Spirit.  In  this  He  was  at  one 
with  the  Supreme,  with  God.  The  perfect 
Spirit  is  the  Only — not  the  only  thing,  for 
spirit,  although  it  is  a  substance,  is  no  thing 
in  the  popular  terms  of  matter — the  'Only 
Begotten  Son  of  God.'  It  is  the  'Man  in 
Our  Image.'  To  utterly  quench  this  Spirit, 
put  out  its  lighting  fire,  is  to  'die  the  death'; 
to  abjure,  to  deny  this  Spirit — this  whole, 
perfect  Spirit,  this  whole.  Holy  Ghost  within 
us  —  is  to  strive  against  and  destroy  the 
eternizing  principle  of  our  present  life,  and 
7  89 


it  leaves  us  to  go  on  in  a  purely  human-animal 
existence,  with  the  Spirit  grieved,  though 
present  ceasing  to  strive  with  us;  and,  finally, 
when  physical  death  comes — or  even  before 
— the  Spirit  'returns  to  God  who  gave  it.' 
The  Soul  has  committed  suicide.  'And 
every  one  who  shall  speak  a  word  against  the 
Son  of  Man,  it  shall  be  forgiven  him;  unto 
him  who  blasphemeth  against  the  Holy 
Ghost,  it  shall  not  be  forgiven.'  In  such  a 
case,  what  becomes  of  the  result  of  the  con- 
nection of  such  a  spirit  and  such  a  rejecting 
human-animal }  There  must  be  some  effect 
caused  by  such  a  connection — the  life  lived, 
the  body  of  desire,  the  personality. 

"The  man-animal  has  lived,  has  been  a 
person,  has  had  an  animal-soul,  and,  so  far 
as  the  Spirit  has  been  resident,  the  beginnings 
of  a  human-soul.  This  animal-soul  must 
have  an  existence  hereafter,  for  it  is  a  some- 
thing; memory  and  remains  of  reason  be- 
long to  it,  but  it  is  a  shell — the  Spirit,  the 
eternal  fire  divine,  having  been  trampled  out. 
It  thereafter  is  an  insane  person  babbling 
of  illusion,  a  person  obsessed  of  the  past, 
possessed  of  a  demon — his  own. 

"To    that    incorrigible    is    reserved     the 

90 


'second  death,'  the  condition  and  effect  of 
the  'sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost.'  The 
quality  of  continuing,  which  gives  eternal 
life,  repudiated,  has  withdrawn  itself.  Such 
a  personality  may  linger  long  among  the 
shades  by  the  river  Styx,  but  having  no 
obolus  to  pay  Charon,  the  ferryman,  he 
wanders  maundering  on  the  shore.  He  is  of 
those  dead,  according  to  St.  John,  to  be 
'cast  into  the  lake  of  fire;  this  is  the  second 
death.'  Even  in  this  life  he  is  like  the 
Church  at  Sardis,  to  whom  it  was  said:  'I 
know  thy  works,  that  thou  hast  a  name,  that 
thou  livest,  and  art  dead.'  But  of  the  human- 
soul,  attaching  itself  to  and  so  being  eternized 
by  the  Spirit  that  quickeneth,  the  savor  of 
life  unto  life,  it  is  said:  'He  that  overcometh 
shall  not  be  hurt  by  the  second  death.'  To 
him  who  overcometh  his  desires  for  the  en- 
joyment of  the  pleasure  of  sense  as  the  end 
and  purpose  of  this  present  life,  who  uses  all 
things,  without  abusing  any,  as  a  means  of 
clothing  the  spirit  with  the  experiences  of 
this  life,  enriching  it  with  loving  action,  all 
things  are  given,  even  eternal  life.  Spirit 
is  that  quality  of  the  Life  of  the  Universe, 
which  is  from  the  beginning — the  everlasting. 

91 


The  destiny  of  man  is  to  become  of  that 
quality.  As  there  is  no  annihilation  of  sub- 
stance— only  change  of  its  forms — it  follows 
that  whatever  is,  was  and  shall  be.  It  is  for 
man  to  acquire  the  everlasting  form,  to  gather 
the  immortelle  from  the  gardens  of  God. 
If  the  animal-man  develops,  acquires,  or  at- 
tains to  a  spiritual -soul,  which  is  of  what 
may  be  called  the  divine  quality  capable  of 
surviving  without  change  of  form — a  Son- 
of-Man  become  a  Son-of-God — the  mortal 
will  have  'put  on  immortality,'  the  everlast- 
ing substance  of  life  will  have  been  absorbed, 
assimilated,  by  the  man,  and  he  will  become 
individually  everlasting.  The  Son-of-David, 
descended  of  a  Kingly  strain,  of  a  peculiar 
people,  was  doubtless  one  among  miUions 
in  bodily  perfection — a  fit  temple  for  the 
indwelling  of  the  Spirit  of  all  Life.  It  was 
objected  by  the  Pharisees  that  He  ate  and 
drank  with  publicans  and  sinners.  This  was 
after  His  body  had  been  cleansed  by  the 
trials  in  the  wilderness  and  perfected  for  the 
indwelling  of  the  Spirit  by  its  thirty  years' 
apprenticeship.  His  body  became  a  temple 
through  all  the  portals  of  which  His  Spiritual 
Soul    shone    in    the    splendor    of  the    trans- 

92 


figuration.  He  so  overcame  bodily  condi- 
tions that  all  men  looking  up  to  Him  may  feel 
that  kin-throb  of  the  divine  Spirit  of  Life, 
may  become  conscious  of  heirship  with  Him 
to  eternal  life,  and  be  free  from  the  desires  of 
the  flesh  by  the  inbreeding  of  that  Spirit! 
It  is  this  Spirit  of  all  Life  which  is  the  'Lamb 
slain  from  the  foundations  of  the  world '  by 
being  embodied  in  flesh;  which  was  in- 
breathed 'in  the  beginning,'  triumphing  over 
its  environment,  arising  from  the  cerements 
of  burial,  overcoming  the  illusions  of  man- 
ifested creation,  resurrected  a  Redeemer; 
which  in  its  perfection  in  the  life,  death,  and 
resurrection  of  our  Lord  we  must  seek,  and, 
having  found,  shall  no  more  see  death.  Why 
did  the  Spirit  descend  into  matter?  Why 
this  mystery  of  redemption  'into  which  the 
angels  desired  to  look'.?  If  we,  'become  as 
little  children,'  may  make  so  great  question- 
ings; inquire  into  the  genesis  of  man;  seek 
to  discover  why  the  Only  Begotten  —  the 
Spirit — should  be  subjected  to  the  created 
Adam,  and  why  the  involution  of  the  Spirit 
into  matter  should  include  an  evolution  of 
the  Spirit  out  of  matter,  we  shall  enter  the 
never-ending  spiral  of  the  circle  which  in- 

93 


volves  an  evermore  seeking  for  more  life, 
and  shall  approach  Him  not  knowing  what 
manner  of  man  we  shall  finally  become,  but 
assured  as  we  do  approach  we  shall  be  like 
unto  Him.  The  divine  order  on  earth,  first 
natural  then  spiritual,  resolves  all  things  back 
as  substantial  Spirit — the  Logos — though,  as 
St.  Paul  says,  'with  much  groanings  of  the 
Spirit  making  intercession  for  the  creature.' 
The  ray  of  the  Spirit  strikes  the  prism  of  this 
life,  is  refracted  and  separated  into  its  con- 
stituent colors,  adorning  the  tearful  sky  of 
earth  for  the  time,  yet  gathering  all  to  itself 
'when  the  storm  of  life  is  past.' 

"However  hypotheses  may  differ  as  to 
whether  any  particular  soul  existing  in  the 
body  came  as  a  direct  special  emanation,  or 
creation,  from  God  into  that  particular  body; 
or  came  through  successive  reincarnations 
from  such  a  direct,  though  incipient,  original 
emanation;  or  is  an  evolution  from  the  prin- 
ciple of  life  force  universally  infused  into  all 
matter,  and  at  last,  by  progressive  experiences, 
working  its  spiral  way  upward  to  Him — the 
Living  Head — finally  to  become  a  conscious, 
living,  Spiritual-Soul,  we  may  rest — italiciz- 
ing according  to  the  light  received — with  the 

94 


written:  'And  the  Lord  God  formed  man 
of  the  dust  of  the  ground  and  breathed  into 
his  nostrils  the  breath  of  Hfe;  and  man  be- 
came a  Hving  soul.'  When  he  shall  so  be- 
come, shall  he  not  be  able  to  breed  a  strain 
of  everlasting  son-souls  ?  The  effect  of 
'Adam's  fall'  may  cite  us  to  the  cause  and 
light  us  to  the  remedy.  The  flood  of  genera- 
tion from  Adam  is  turned  back  by  the  re- 
generation of  the  Spirit,  as  manifested  in  the 
Christ.  Sin  is  generic.  To  be  'born  in 
sin,'  to  be  'totally  depraved,'  is  to  be  subject 
to  the  flesh — to  the  material — to  be  un- 
regenerate.  The  development  and  realiza- 
tion in  consciousness  of  the  Spirit  is  a  re- 
demption from  the  flesh,  a  'growth  in  grace,' 
an  involution  of  the  Christ  in  man.  In  the 
spiritual-soul  is  the  quality  of  eternal  life, 
and  in  it  resides  the  potency  of  all  things. 
Redemption  from  sin  is  the  acquirement  of 
the  quality — the  condition — of  non-sinning; 
it  is  the  'new  birth'  by  the  regeneration  of  the 
Spirit  in  man.  This  quality  of  Eternal  Life 
is  of  individual  experience,  to  be  sought  with 
patient  obedience  and  courage.  It  is  a  state 
of  being.  Will  must  join  with  desire  and  as- 
piration to  achieve  it.     It  is  a  gift  from  above, 

95 


but  its  reception  and  realization  in  conscious- 
ness is  upon  condition  of  earnest  personal 
seeking — 'knock  and  it  shall  be  opened.' 
Simon,  the  sorcerer,  could  not  purchase  it. 
This  individual  responsibility  to  seek  it  can- 
not be  shirked  or  shared.  Neither  custom 
nor  fashion,  authority  nor  servitude,  can  di- 
vest the  right  or  absolve  from  the  duty  of 
every  one  to  strive  for  individual  everlasting 
life.  The  acquirement  of  the  quality  of  not 
sinning  may  be  called  the  'state  of  holiness'; 
as  the  personal  consciousness  of  the  incom- 
ing of  the  spirit  may  be  termed  'conversion ' — 
'the  new  birth.'  While  heaven  is  a  state  of 
condition,  not  a  place,  what  makes  it  is  the 
quahty  of  the  inhabitant.  'The  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  is  within  you.'  Nature,  with  man 
a  part,  climbs  without  haste,  irresistibly  sure, 
to  complexity,  the  final  step  embracing  all 
before.  There  is  naught  in  the  Universe 
which   is   not  in   Man — its  epitome,   its   mi- 


crocosm 


The  Egyptian  conceived  the  idea  of  the 
irresistible  force  of  the  Spirit  of  Life  when  he 
set  up  the  Sphinx — 'the  Champion  Spirit 
of  the  World,'  'with  calm,  eternal  eyes  gazing 
straight  on,'  and  with   nourishing  breasts — 

96 


a  symbol  of  the  persistence  and  frultfulness 
of  that  Force. 

"Every  atom  of  the  Universe,  subject  to  the 
Spirit  of  Life,  has  an  intelHgent  purpose, 
adapting  itself  to  its  environment,  pursuing 
that  purpose  in  the  way  of  least  resistance. 
That  intelligent  purpose  progressively  be- 
comes instinct,  and,  by  heredity,  perpetuates 
itself,  with  increasing  tendencies  as  intelli- 
gence accumulates,  the  fittest  for  the  environ- 
ment surviving.  As  instinct  meets  obstacles 
in  its  subservience  to  the  persistence  of  force, 
endeavoring  to  obey  this  law  of  its  being, 
reason  is  the  result  and  reward.  Thereupon 
in  his  progress  animal-man  reaches  up  to 
and  embraces  Psyche,  the  soul,  as  his  help- 
mate toward  immortality. 

'*As  Psyche  develops  by  experience  with 
man,  the  time  comes  when  she  may  exist 
alone,  without  the  cruder  grossness  of  flesh 
and  blood  as  an  informer  and  interpreter, 
and,  with  the  spiritual  body  as  her  habitat, 
seek  an  ethereal  home.  Can  we  conceive  a 
higher  intelligence  than  that  force  which 
pervades  all  matter — the  divine  wisdom  in 
the  Life  of  the  Universe  ? 

"Why  should  not  this  Life  be  aggregated  in 

97 


the  highest  complexity  of  matter,  man  ? 
And,  if  it  should  be,  why  may  not  man  be- 
come conscious  of  its  indwelling  force  and 
use  it  to  discover  and  forward  his  own 
spiritual  progress  as  an  individual  entity, 
to  attain  and  be  of  the  quality  of  eternal 
life — to  be  an  everlasting  immortal:  And 
when  he  shall  become  and  be  such,  why 
should  he  not  be  an  intelligent  force,  as  a 
radium  of  light,  an  electron  permeating 
matter  ?  Nor  would  it  be  in  derogation  of  the 
possession  by  man  of  such  immortality  that 
he  should  finally  deny  to  himself  further  en- 
try into  human  life  on  earth,  or  to  anew  his 
experiences  of  the  unrealities  of  material  life, 
but  should  prefer  to  become  a  Spiritual 
Sphinx!  To  such  an  immortalized  man  life 
and  death  would  be  only  changes  of  environ- 
ment. 

"It  is  a  function  of  such  a  soul  to  exist 
without  the  human  body  as  well  as  within 
it.  While  the  body  is  habitable  the  soul  has 
the  possible  power  of  egress  and  ingress, 
and  by  means  of  that  vehicle,  by  some  called 
the  astral  body,  it  may  assume  bodily  shape 
and  presence  without  as  well  as  when  resi- 
dent in  the  body. 

98 


"Where  was  Christ  during  the  burial  of  His 
body?  He,  his  spiritual-soul,  was  'preach- 
ing to  the  souls  in  bondage.'  That  highest 
spiritual  potency  manifest  in  Jesus,  the 
Christ,  was  in  Him  an  embodied  entity, 
being  of  the  essential  quality  of  Eternal  Life. 
It  was  something,  a  resident,  incorporeal 
substance.  It  existed  on  earth  while  His  body 
was  in  the  sepulchre — apart  from  yet  of  the 
body.  It  went  into  the  middle  under-world. 
Hades;  into  Hades,  the  world  of  spirits, 
where  souls  bound  by  affection  for  those  yet 
living,  where  souls  filled  with  the  unsatis- 
fied passions  of  life,  where  souls  released 
from  their  bodies  by  untimely  death  through 
disease,  accidental  or  suicidal  violence — sent 
into  Hades  'half  made  up,'  have  not  entered 
into  their  rest  nor  yet  desire  to  enter  therein, 
and  so  are  'in  prison';  maybe,  in  course  of 
purgation;  to  these  the  liberated  Christ,  the 
Spiritual  personage,  as  a  celestial  presence, 
preached.  He  descended  into  hell  —  Hades 
— and  'loosed  those  which  were  bound,' 
not  to  return  to  earth  but  to  pass  forward. 
He  held  the  keys  of  both  death  and  Hades. 
Lazarus  went  through  the  gate  of  death,  but 
not  of  Hades.     When  the  stone  was  rolled 

99 


away  from  the  tomb  of  Joseph  of  Arimathea, 
Jesus  went  'before  them  into  GaHlee,'  as 
He  had  told  His  disciples  and  Mary;  and  it  is 
questionable  whether  His  body  of  flesh  ever 
after  its  entombment  was  seen  by  His  disciples. 
His  public  work,  His  work  for  the  ages  was 
finished.  Upon  the  cross  He  had  yielded  up 
His  life  on  earth  with  a  recitative  of  the  open- 
ing cry  of  that  singularly  appropriate  script- 
ure, the  twenty -second  Psalm:  'My  God, 
my  God,  why  hast  thou  forsaken  me  ?'  That 
Psalm,  if  read  to  its  triumphant  conclusion, 
vindicates  His  quotation  from  despair.  While 
filled  with  the  woes  of  the  crucifixion,  it  was 
an  adoption  of  the  Psalm  as  a  prophecy, 
a  last  testament  of  His  own  character  and 
final  victory.  Afterward,  in  the  garden, 
Mary  did  not  recognize  Him.  To  the  two 
disciples,  with  Him  in  a  walk  of  threescore 
furlongs  to  Emmaus,  though  their  hearts 
burned  within  them  as  He  talked  by  the  way, 
He  was  not  known  save,  at  last,  in  the  break- 
ing of  bread.  Then  'their  eyes  were  opened 
and  they  knew  Him;  and  He  vanished  from 
their  sight.'  The  same  evening,  in  Jerusalem, 
He  appeared  to  the  disciples,  the  doors  being 
shut  for  fear  of  the  Jews,  and  the  disciples, 

100 


though  terrified,  recognized  the  Lord.  A 
visitation  was  made  by  Him  in  Hke  manner 
a  week  later.  It  was  His  speech  which  made 
Him  known  to  them.  At  the  sea  of  Tiberias, 
whither  He  went  'before  them  into  Galilee,' 
He  was  not  at  first  recognized.  Upon  the 
Mount  of  Ascension  He  ascended — disap- 
peared in  the  air — 'in  the  clouds  of  heaven.' 
These  manifestations  as  such  were  substantial. 
The  idea  that  they  were  merely  the  visions 
of  self-deluded  and  credulous  persons  is  as 
chimerical  as  the  phenomena  doubted.  Must 
it  not  have  been  His  phantasm,  simulacrum, 
double,  bodiless  body,  astral  body — the  spir- 
itual body,  under  the  control  of  His  own 
conscious  spirit,  walking,  speaking,  eating 
even,  substantially  flowing  out  of  His  body 
of  flesh  and  blood — of  the  whereabouts  of 
which  body  conjecture  has  no  facts  to  present. 
Between  the  several  separate  times  when  He 
manifested  Himself  we  have  no  account  of 
Him  whatever.  St.  John  always  speaks  of 
His  appearances  after  the  burial  as  mani- 
festations, revealings,  of  Himself. 

"Light  is  a  force  in  motion;  we  do  not  see 
its  shine  save  as  its  rays  are  obstructed  in  their 
progress  and  reflected;  so  spirit,  which  is  a 

lOI 


formless  force,  to  be  visible,  must  come  in 
contact  with,  or  invest,  some  material  object. 
"As  the  imponderables,  heat,  electricity, 
magnetism,  are  resolvable  into  each  other, 
are  correlatives,  there  must  be  a  matrix  of 
them  all,  out  of  which  they  are  differentiated 
by  vibration — a  mother  of  many  children,  a 
complexity  of  one  in  which  they  all  reside. 
So  it  must  be  that  there  is  a  force  of  life  be- 
hind all  motion,  a  life  that  vibrates  through 
all  the  Universe,  In  the  vibrations  of  that 
force  of  life  is  the  telegraph  of  souls — in  and 
out  of  the  body.  May  not  the  blood  be 
vitalized  by  that  force  in  motion,  and  that 
force  be  the  thing  which  makes  the  difference 
between  the  living  and  the  dead  }  He  who 
has  the  power  to  put  that  force  in  motion 
may  act  as  a  battery  and  evolve  and  transmit 
it,  'For  whether  it  is  easier  to  say.  Thy  sins 
are  forgiven;  or  to  say.  Arise  and  walk.'' 
But  that  ye  may  know  that  the  Son  of  Man 
hath  power  on  earth  to  forgive  sins,  I  say 
unto  thee.  Arise,  and  take  up  thy  bed  and  go 
into  thy  house.'  Disease,  the  consequence 
and  the  burden  of  transgression  (sin),  the 
hireling  of  death,  is  the  changing  of  the  form 
of  life,  not  its  activity.     The  decay  of  one 

102 


form  is  the  insurgence  of  another — a  change 
in  the  direction  of  force,  a  transformation  of 
motion.  This  constant  progression  of  forms 
is  the  recurrent  sowing  and  harvest — Saturn 
devouring  his  children.  The  scenes  are 
shifted,  the  play — the  play  goes  on.  Each 
scene  is  prolonged  until  the  part  it  localized 
is  fully  played  out.  Rest  is  but  the  coming 
into  equilibrium  with  the  environment;  and 
motion  is  only  motion  by  relation.  Up  and 
down  are  not  opposed  to  each  other.  The 
balloonist  is  not  conscious  of  moving  as  he 
rests  on  the  bosom  of  the  wind,  except  as  he 
observes  the  earth  beneath  or  the  clouds 
about  him.  All  earthly  objects  appear  to 
rest  as  they  yield  to  and  are  at  one  with  the 
force  which  carries  the  earth  in  its  orbit. 
Gravitation  is  the  seeking  for  harmony  with 
the  motion  of  force.  The  harmony  of  nat- 
ure is  the  unity  of  direction  of  force.  The  re- 
sistance of  the  air  to  force  is  the  cause  of  its 
vibration  as  sound;  the  air  is  not  the  vehicle 
of  force  to  carry  sound:  it  is  the  resistance 
of  the  air  to  force  which  causes  the  vibration 
known  as  sound.  Behind  all  motion  lies 
force — the  Divine  Energy.  It  may  well  be 
imagined  that  the  various  forms  of  force  must 

103 


be  conserved  in  one,  of  which  they  are  but 
part  and  into  which  they  may  be  resolved. 
Each  atom  ceaselessly  whirls  within  its 
sphere;  the  earth  revolves  about  the  sun, 
and  the  sun  advances  in  step  with  a  multitude 
of  other  suns  on  his  grand  round,  followed 
by  his  courtier  suite.  May  not  it  yet  be 
found  that  the  activities  of  all  are  as  one, 
the  mode  of  motion  of  the  atom  in  its  ratio 
the  same  with  the  shining  hosts  of  the  firma- 
ment ^  It  must  be  in  the  small  as  in  the 
great.  To  find  it  is  to  unveil  the  Infinite 
Force,  'that  Power,  outside  ourselves,  which 
makes  for  righteousness.'  Sin  is  want  of  con- 
formity to  that  Force.  So  love  is  the  gravita- 
tion of  souls — toward  God. 

"As  it  is  the  hinted  suggestion  of  modern 
science  that  all  matter  may  be  resolved  into 
one  element,  it  is  but  a  sequence  that  it  is  the 
evolution,  the  out-breathing,  of  an  initial 
Force — the  One.  If  electricity  is  life,  does 
it  think  ?  No,  the  Smith  is  behind  the  ham- 
mer. Thought  is  a  force  which  can  project 
a  vibration.  The  Thinker  is  the  god  in  the 
machine. 

"All  things  are  possible  to  the  Spirit  of 
Life — this  out-breathed  Force — to  be  excited 

104 


to  motion  through  man  by  Faith.  'If  ye 
have  faith  as  a  grain  of  mustard  seed  ye  shall 
say  unto  this  mountain:  Remove  hence  to 
yonder  place,  and  it  shall  remove;  nothing 
shall  be  impossible  unto  you.'  Such  faith 
must  be  a  force  capable  of  exciting  atomic 
action.  May  not  atomic  vibration  be  awak- 
ened by  the  will  of  the  spiritual  minded  .? 

"Ordinarily  we  do  not  distinguish  between 
opinion,  belief,  and  faith.  Opinion  is  tenta- 
tive; asserting  a  fact  to  be  upon  the  known 
evidence,  but  with  an  implied  reservation  of 
final  decision  upon  newly  discovered  evidence. 
Belief  rests  upon  the  known  evidence  with  a 
conclusive  finding  that  there  is  no  other 
variant,  and  this  behef  regulates  conduct. 
Belief,  in  the  sense  in  which  Jesus  employed 
it,  has  been  defined  to  be  'that  judgment  of 
the  human  soul  which  vindicates  the  absolute 
verity  of  a  suggestion;  that  condition  of  the 
fully  enlightened  soul  which  unhesitatingly 
recognizes  such  verity.'  Prayer,  by  a  per- 
son's concentrated  contemplation  of  and  ap- 
peal to  the  Supreme,  is  a  means  of  lifting  the 
soul  into  spiritual  condition — one  of  the 
mind's  athletics  whereby  the  soul  is  prepared 
for  insight,  for  strength,  for  help  to  believe, 
8  105 


through  which  faith  may  be  obtained.  There 
must  be  a  consciousness  of  power  in  a  man 
possessed  of  faith.  It  is  the  man  who  has 
received  faith — the  divine  efflux  of  the  Spirit 
of  Life,  the  'God  in  us' — who  may  remove 
the   mountain. 

"'As  a  man  thinketh,  so  he  is.'  The 
thoughts  of  God;  who  can  think  them  ? 
They  are  manifest  in  matter — as  above,  so 
below;  on  earth  as  it  is  in  heaven,  in  the  small 
as  in  the  great. 

"Only  as  we  are  fitted  hy  condition^  so  can 
we  receive;  and  as  we  are  able,  so  we  shall 
receive.  'Unto  every  one  which  hath  shall 
be  given;  and  from  him  that  hath  not,  even 
that  he  hath  shall  be  taken  away  from  him' 
— that  is,  the  unused  capacity  to  have. 

"  Knowledge  of  the  truth  '  cometh  not  by 
observation.'  It  is  the  gift  of  the  Spirit. 
A  kernel  of  wheat  may  lie  for  thousands  of 
years  in  an  Egyptian  pyramid,  and  when 
taken  out  may  germinate  and  grow  to  a 
harvest.  So  may  a  soul  in  its  fruition  of  this 
life  lie  in  Hades,  and,  retaining  a  fertilization 
of  the  divine  Spirit  of  Life,  in  the  ages,  come 
forth  into  growth  again  upon  the  earth  and 
begin  anew  its  spiral  climb  to  everlasting  life. 

1 06 


Ignorance  is  the  home  of  the  supernatural. 
There  is  nothing  supernatural  to  the  wise." 
My  Hermit  is  not  a  priest,  nor  is  he  a 
preacher.  He's  simply  a  thinker  for  think- 
ing's sake,  and  a  meditative  talker.  I  put 
a  question  or  two  touching  your  inquiries, 
and  out  of  the  quaint  fulness  of  his  thought 
there  springs  the  flow  of  words  which  I  have 
pitchered  from  time  to  time  and  now  pour  out 
to  you,  until  I  am  afraid  you  have  dropped 
your  cup  from  utter  weariness. 
Faithfully  yours, 


Gapri,  Italy,  March  20,   190-. 

My  dear : 

I  see  the  dawning  smile  which  ushers  the 
awaiting  dimple  in  your  cheek,  as  you  read 
of  my  enthusiasm  for  my  dear  Hermit,  when 
you  remember  the 

"Waltzes,  polkas,  lancers,  reels,  and  glides, 
Highland,  schottische,  quadrille,  gallops,  slides, 
.  .  .  How  we  danced  them  all!" 
107 


Oh,  how  we  swam  and  swirled  with  the 
swing  of  the  vioHn  in  valse  bleu! 

"And  it's  all  over  now."  .  .  .  ?  I  am  glad 
if  you  do  remember,  and  if  the  smile  shall 
ripple  into  glad,  gay  laughter  when  you  think 
of  the  good  times 

"O'  Life!  we've  had  long  together, 
Through  pleasant  and  through  cloudy  weather." 

But  I  hope  it  shall  be  ages  before  "in  some 
brighter  clime  I  shall  bid  you  good-morn- 
mg! 

You  say  that  "at  least  the  influence  of  the 
Ancient  will  teach  jne  reverence  for  grave 
matters,  if  one  is  to  believe  what  he  says 
about  the  resurrection."  There,  I  see  Cupid's 
bow  pouted  over  Little  Teacher's  firm  under 
lip  as  it  closes  over  "grave  matters."  The 
earnestness  of  that  straight  guardian  nose 
above  bids  me  pause.  If  we  really  do  believe 
in  the  life  of  the  Spiritual-Soul  apart  from 
the  body  in  an  ascended  Christ,  why  not  be 
cheerful  about  "one  who  wraps  the  drapery 
of  his  couch  about  him  and  lies  down  to 
pleasant  dreams"?  Why  always  be  going 
''down  to  the  grave,"  or  be   going  to  "the 

1 08 


undiscovered  country  from  whose  bourne  no 
traveller  returns"  ?  For  death  **was  not  spoken 
of  the  soul,"  and  "the  grave  is  not  its  goal." 
As  my  Ancient  says,  *' There  is  no  up  or 
down;  it's  all  God!"  What  is  the  use  of  our 
tossing  up  the  dirt  in  our  road  that  we  may 
walk  in  the  falling  dust?  "Pray,  and  in 
everything  give  thanks!"  "Joy  in  tribula- 
tion," as  a  means  if  not  a  reward  for  well- 
doing; and  know  that  we  are  in  the  world 
to  stay  and  see  it  out!  Why  should  we  not 
run  rejoicing  as  the  sun  of  the  morning  than 
loiter  with  that  Dolly  Varden  nun  of  the 
skies,  "pale  forweariness  of  climbing  heaven"? 
"The  laughter  of  man  is  the  contentment  of 
God !"  The  dying  Irishman  who,  when  asked 
by  his  friend  whether  the  mourners  should 
drink  the  wake-whiskey  going  to  or  coming 
from  the  cemetery,  answered,  "Whin  goin', 
for  I'll  be  wid  ye  thin,"  had  a  better  com- 
prehension of  grave  affairs  than  those  lugu- 
brians  who  are  never  so  happy  as  when  they 
are  miserable,  and  who  dote  on  the  time  when 
"the  mourners  go  about  the  street  and  the 
grinding  is  low,"  The  theological  student 
who,  when  requested  by  his  professor  to  give 
the  exegesis  of  St.  Paul's  exclamation,  "Now 

109 


death  is  swallowed  up  in  victory,"  said, 
"There  are  two  lessons  to  be  drawn — one 
patent,  the  other  inferred:  one  that  death  is 
swallowed  up  in  victory,  and  the  other  that 
it  is  swallowed  down."  You  have  your 
choice! 

"Oh,  bold  blue  sky!     Oh,  keen  glad  wind! 

I  wonder  me  if  this  may  be  ? 
That  some  fair  day,  leaving  life  behind, 

Our  eyes  shall  view  new  land,  new  sea, 
So  exquisite  that,  lo!  with  thrilling  breath, 
We  shall  laugh  loud  for  very  joy  of  death." 

We  will  learn,  "some  sweet  day,"  how  to 
die  as  we  now  go  to  sleep;  we  will  know,  also, 
how  to  awake — and  when!  And  this  will 
be  when  we  undoubtingly  know 

"That  life  is  ever  Lord  of  death, 
And  love  can  never  lose  its  own." 

The  face  of  the  comfortably  dead  is  won- 
derful for  its  peacefulness,  its  "strange  aloof- 
ness and  preoccupation." 

"Death  smoothes   the  wrinkles  of  the  past,  and 
somewhat 
.     .     .     reveals  the  child  forgot." 

no 


I  doubt  if  my  Hermit  has  given  as  clear  a 
definition  of  faith  as  this,  stated  by  St.  Paul: 
"Faith  is  the  substance  of  things  hoped  for, 
the  evidence  of  things  unseen."  Hope  ex- 
presses both  desire  and  expectation.  You 
may  desire,  yet  not  expect.  To  expect  you 
must  have  a  basis  of  facts  from  experience 
sufficient  to  remove  doubt  from  the  mind, 
and  this,  with  desire,  is  a  reasonable  ground 
for  "things  hoped  for";  so,  to  have  faith  to 
heal  or  to  remove  mountains,  you  must  also 
have  in  yourself  the  substance  of  things  hoped 
for — the  poiuer  to  do  so,  v^hich  is  "the  evi- 
dence of  things  unseen";  without  that  you 
cannot  expect  to  do  anything. 

I  suspected  you  would  be  surprised  by  my 
old  friend's  matter-of-fact  treatment  of  the 
resurrection  of  our  Lord.  The  truthfulness 
of  the  appearances  to  the  disciples  is  shown 
by  the  ingenuousness  of  their  narration,  upon 
the  assumption  by  them  that  the  spiritual- 
soul  may  exist  and  be  visible  in  the  spiritual- 
body.  He  was  dead  by  all  the  common 
tests  of  the  time,  but  the  power  of  resurrection 
was  in  the  vitalizing  energy  of  His  will,  which 
operated  as  a  force  to  revive  tissue.  He 
had  asserted  His  ability  to  rebuild  the  temple 

III 


of  His  body  in  three  days;  it  was  rebuilt 
between  Friday  evening  and  that  Sunday 
dawn  when  He  came  forth  from  the  tomb,  to 
the  terror  and  stupefaction  of  His  Roman 
guard,  which  had  been  posted  at  the  sepulchre 
to  prevent  His  disciples  carrying  His  body 
away  by  night.  He,  in  His  crucified  body, 
went  before  them  into  Galilee.  He  could 
not  in  safety  have  been  seen  by  the  Jews  of 
Jerusalem,  for  the  decree  of  death  would  not 
have  been  satisfied. 

Many  modern  instances  of  both  living  and 
of  recently  dead  persons  projecting  their 
"appearances"  to  a  distance  and  being  rec- 
ognized and  conversed  with  have  been 
proved.  There  is  a  very  old  and  famous 
tapestry  in  the  Galleria  of  the  Arazzi  in  the 
Vatican  which  pictures  the  appearance  of 
Jesus  to  His  disciples  as  a  "shade."  This 
shows  that  the  artist  who  designed  the  tapes- 
try sought  to  revive  the  idea  conveyed  by 
the  New  Testament.  When  Jesus  appeared 
to  His  disciples  in  Galilee,  St.  Matthew  re- 
lates that  "when  they  saw  Him  they  wor- 
shipped Him,  but  some  doubted";  and  St. 
John  writes  of  the  same  event:  "And  none 
of   the    disciples    durst  ask  Him,  *Who  art 

112 


Thou  ?'  knowing  that  it  was  the  Lord." 
Both  St.  Matthew  and  St.  John  convey  the 
idea  of  timorous  apprehension  on  the  part  of 
the  disciples  at  the  sight  of  the  appearance. 
T  here  was  no  such  wonder,  fear,  or  doubt  at 
the  grave  of  Lazarus,  or  in  the  house  of 
Jairus,  or  in  the  street  of  the  city  of  Nain, 
when  the  dead  were  raised.  He  was  not  rec- 
ognized as  an  actual  flesh-and-blood  man, 
but  appeared  with  all  the  semblance  of  one, 
and  invited  the  disciples  to  identify  Him  as 
such,  and  not  as  a  mere  ghost  of  the  imagi- 
nation, when  He  came  in  unto  them  in  Jeru- 
salem, "the  doors  being  shut." 

You  say:  "If  He  appeared  to  His  disciples 
as  a  mere  shade,  it  takes  all  the  force  from 
the  idea  of  the  resurrection."  But  if  it  was 
an  intelligent  "shade"  —  the  house  of  His 
mind,  soul,  the  Spiritual-Soul  in  the  Spiritual- 
Body — does  not  that  prove  the  existence  of  the 
mind,  the  soul,  apart  from  the  flesh-and-blood 
body,  as  an  existing  entity  resurgent  from  the 
common  clay,  and  justifies  your  faith  in  the 
Christ  as  ever  living?  This  Imperial  Per- 
sonage whose  teachings,  moral  and  ethical, 
are  absolute  edicts  for  all  time,  is  and 
through  the  ages  shall  be  a  Spiritual  Pres- 

"3 


ence  ever  living,  preaching  to  all  Souls  in 
Bondage. 

You  do  not  suppose  that  Jesus  in  His  body 
of  flesh  and  blood  ascended  ?  The  material 
flesh-and-blood  body  of  the  son  of  Mary 
was  not  the  Christ  of  your  hope.  That  He 
W2LS  able  to  manifest  Himself  on  earth  as  a 
living  Soul  without  that  body  is  the  proof  of 
the  immortality  of  that  Soul. 

You  are  becoming  a  real  theologue  when 
you  follow  up  your  first  interrogatory  by  a 
Socratian  other:  "If  it  be  true  that  it  was 
the  'spiritual-body'  which  ascended  into  the 
heavens,  what  becomes  of  the  resurrection 
of  the  earth-body,?"     Let  St.  Paul  answer: 

"Now  this  I  say,  brethren,  that  flesh  and 
blood  cannot  inherit  the  Kingdom  of  God; 
neither  doth  corruption  inherit  incorrup- 
tion, 

"So  also  is  the  resurrection  of  the  dead.  It 
is  sown  in  corruption,  it  is  raised  in  incorrup- 
tion;  it  is  sown  in  dishonor,  it  is  raised  in 
glory;  it  is  sown  in  weakness,  it  is  raised  in 
power;  it  is  sown  a  natural  body,  it  is  raised 
a  spiritual  body.  If  there  is  a  natural  body, 
there  is  also  a  spiritual  body.  So  also  it  is 
written,    The    first   Adam   became    a    living 

114 


Soul.     The  last  Adam  became  a  life-giving 

spirit." 

So  far  as  I  am  concerned,  I  don't  care; 
earth  to  earth,  dust  to  dust,  and  ashes  to 
ashes  with  my  body,  so  that  I  save  my  Soul. 
"That  which  is  born  of  the  flesh  is  flesh;  and 
that  which  is  born  of  the  spirit  is  spirit." 
When  Titus  burned  to  ashes  the  Temple  at 
Jerusalem,  and  the  blood  of  the  brave  and 
only  death-conquered  Jews  ran  in  floods 
about  the  Holy  of  Holies,  it  is  said  that, 
above  the  turmoil  and  roar  of  battle  and 
flame,  strange  voices  were  heard  in  the  air, 
sorrowful  yet  fateful:  "Let  us  go  hence." 

You  further  say:  "Your  Hermit  does  not 
admit  or  affirm  that  he  has  ever  lived  in  the 
flesh  on  earth  before  his  present  incarnation. 
If  he  affirms  it,  what  reason  has  he  to  know 
it .?     Does  he  remember  .?" 

No,  he  has  neither  admitted  nor  affirmed; 
yet  he  evidently  beheves  that  he  has.  I  think 
this  because  of  his  firm  assertion  of  his  belief 
in  the  fact  of  the  reincarnation  and  progress 
of  souls.  If  he  did  admit  or  affirm,  what 
conclusive  proof  would  that  be  to  you  or  me  ? 
We  would  not  rest  content  upon  the  word  of 
belief  even  of  so  good  and  sincere  a  man; 

115 


we  must  have  proof — something  tangible  to 
our  reasonable  intelligence;  and  he  fully 
realizes  the  futility  of  such  a  mere  expression. 
I  might  answer  your  question  by  asking: 
How  would  he  give  you  such  proof?  How 
could  you  verify  his  experience  ?  No  doubt 
he  feels  many  suggestions  foreign  to  all  his 
experiences  in  this  Hfe  which  determine  his 
intuitive  loves  and  his  hates  (if  the  dear  soul 
has  any  hates,  even  for  the  Saracens),  so 
many  Hmitations  and  inspirations  to  feeling 
and  conduct,  so  many  susceptibilities,  for 
which  he  has  no  cause  or  reason  whatever, 
and  for  which  he  can  look  for  their  source 
only  in  a  previous  incarnation.  My  Seer  has 
passed  that  animal  stage  where  thought  is  but 
the  recurrence  of  fermentations  of  cellular 
conditions,  evolving  electrical  currents  in  the 
billions  of  thought  tracts  with  which  a  long 
excitation  of  sensory  nerve  action  has  criss- 
crossed the  brain,  as  the  scientific  mate- 
rialists would  have  it.  He  has  spiritual 
insight;  his  meditations  are  those  of  concen- 
trated intellections.  His  is  not  "the  ecstatic 
stupor  of  the  cow  .  .  .  chewing  the  cud  of  sweet 
and  bitter  fancies."  He  has  come  to  himself 
and  said,  "I  will  go  to  my  father,"  leaving 

ii6 


the  "husks  that  the  swine  did  eat" — to — to 
those  who  hke  them! 

I  can  conceive  how  a  person  may  attain  a 
clear  consciousness,  a  knowledge  of  former 
lives,  not  derivative  from  memory,  but  ac- 
quired by  actual  inspiration,  which  he  may 
hesitate  to  assert.  There  are  certain  sacred- 
nesses  which  the  soul  (as  well  as  the  heart) 
may  not  profane  by  speech.  They  belong 
to  the  experiences  of  that  sixth  sense  my  old 
friend  talks  of;  are  the  revelations  no  man 
may  utter;  for  words  are  but  the  angels  of 
the  soul  and  many  of  them  are  fallen.  "See 
thou  tell  no  man "  was  a  prescription  for 
healing  of  which  Jesus  knew  the  psychical 
efficacy — the  failure  to  follow  which  is  the 
origin  of  doubt  and  then  relapse.  Henry 
Ward  Beecher  once  denounced  as  sacrilegious 
those  familiar  but  good-meaning  people  who 
slap  a  person  on  the  back  and  say,  "How's 
your  soul .?" 

You  say  you  are  afraid  you  would  "lose 
identity  when  born  again  into  a  strange,  new 
body."  Have  you  lost  it  in  your  present 
body  ?  Do  you  think  you  are  you  now  .?  The 
physicists  say  that  we  renew  our  tissues, 
our  bones  even,  every  seven  years.     Don't 

117 


you  think  your  ego  rather  comfortably  feels 
itself  to  be  itself  now  after,  say,  three  such 
renewals  ?  May  I  not  venture  to  suppose 
that  you  vividly  remember  the  personal 
events  of  your  life,  even  some  of  your  dreams, 
preceding  all  the  three  ?  But  it  is  not  upon 
that  remembrance  only  that  you  base  your 
identity;  it  is  rather  upon  your  knowledge  of 
the  continued  sameness,  of  the  unintermittent 
continuity  of  your  Self.  You  may  compare 
your  states  of  mind  and  feeling  now  with 
those,  let  me  suppose,  of  last  September! 
But  you  will  not,  by  the  mere  act  of  memory, 
assume  to  test  your  identity.  That  any- 
thing is  or  was  does  not  depend  on  memory. 
That  you  remember  now  depends  on  your 
present  ability  to  reproduce  the  sensation 
of — of — our  parting!  That  sensation  may 
not  affect  you  now,  except  as  a  passing 
memory — a  has-been. 

You  have  spent  one-fourth,  at  any  rate,  of 
your  time  in  sleep;  Hke  that  church  at  Sardis, 
you  were  living  yet  dead — asleep;  yet  your 
Thinker  knows  itself  to  be  itself  after  for- 
getting itself  for  seven  years  of  your  present 
life.  Why  should  you  fear  to  prolong  that 
sleep,  or  to  go  to  sleep  and,  when  you  awake, 

ii8 


get  into  a  new  body  as  you  shall  deserve  to 
choose;  for  it  must  be  the  logical  conclusion 
of  the  Aged  One's  doctrine  of  cause  and  effect, 
the  sowing  and  reaping,  that  you  will  get 
your  deserts — with  some  of  us,  that's  the  rub ! 

The  genealogy  of  sin  as  an  infraction  of 
moral  or  physical  law,  under  the  operation 
of  the  rule  of  cause  and  effect,  embraces  the 
past  as  well  as  the  present  life,  as  shown  by 
the  story  of  the  "man  blind  from  his  birth," 
concerning  whom  the  disciples  of  Jesus  asked: 
"Master,  who  did  sin,  this  man  or  his  parents, 
that  he  was  born  blind  ?"  The  Master 
answered:  "Neither  hath  this  man  sinned, 
nor  his  parents;  but  that  the  works  of  God 
should  be  manifest  in  him."  Thereupon  He 
healed  the  man.  But  why  the  question  ? 
It  must  have  been  upon  the  presentation  of 
the  blind  man  as  an  object-lesson  of  a  previous 
teaching  by  the  Master,  and  was  shown  to 
be  an  exception  proving  the  rule;  the  "sin" 
was  an  accidental  sin,  a  prenatal  mishap, 
for  which  neither  the  parents  nor  the  blind 
man  was  morally  responsible. 

I  fear  you  will  have  to  be  content  to  believe 
that  each  soul  must  come  to  have  within  itself 
the  subconsciousness   of  previous   existence, 

119 


because  any  extrinsic  record  of  a  previous 
life  on  earth  after  a  thousand  years  or  so  of 
"heaven"  can  hardly  be  preserved,  and 
memory  of  the  sensations  of  any  previous 
Hves  on  earth  will  only  have  as  their  heirs  by 
spiritual  heredity  the  unconscious  suggestions 
they  have  in  the  present  life.  To  a  soul  in- 
born of  the  Spirit  of  Life  there  must  come  in 
some  transcendent  state  of  intellection  a 
conscious  continuity  of  individuality  inde- 
pendent of  the  shell-body,  which,  as  in  the 
Hermit,  knows  itself  to  be  itself — a  child  ever- 
lasting from  its  progenition,  and  not  a  gross 
phenomenon  of  matter. 

Solely  because  a  man-animal  stands  erect 
on  his  hind  legs,  and,  reasoning  upon  his 
experiences,  feeds,  clothes,  and  shelters  him- 
self, he  has  not  a  continuing  "soul  to  save," 
nor  can  he  "call  his  soul  his  own"  so  as  to  be 
capable  of  living  endlessly;  but  to  become 
so  he  must  involve  the  highest  into  his  lower 
condition  by  reaching  up  and  bringing  down 
into  himself  the  Spirit  of  Life.  "All  good  gifts 
come  from  above."  Evolution  is  a  cry  for 
help !    Growth  is  the  ability  to  add  to  one's  self. 

My  old  Philosopher  and  Friend  does  not 
ignore  physical  heredity  in  his  exaltation  and 

1 20 


prophecy  of  the  everlastingness  of  the  spiritual 
entity;  for,  upon  my  suggestion  that  his 
genealogy  of  the  spirit  or  soul  in  man  ought 
to  have  some  correlation  in  man's  material 
body,  to  keep  pace  with  his  spiritual  uplift, 
he  said:  "These  bodies  of  ours  are  instinct 
with  the  man-animal  germ  since  his  emergence. 
Each  of  the  millions  of  cells  in  our  flesh  and 
bones  has  a  history,  and  by  specific  functions 
of  the  brain  carrying  those  sensations  to  the 
Thinker  a  character  has  been  formed  by  that 
history.  This  character  is  transmitted  and 
specialized  from  generation  to  generation, 
and  each,  in  its  degree,  is  intelligently  re- 
lated to  others  and  becomes  more  complex 
as  well  as  distinctive  —  a  microcosm  of  all 
past  experiences — just  as  the  Thinker,  the 
Psyche,  has  its  past  history  and  character; 
with  the  vital  difference  that  Psyche  has 
assumed  control  and  wardship,  and  finally 
has  outgrown  the  body." 

I  can  readily  trace  your  wheat-gold  hair, 
born  of  the  sun  and  snow,  nurtured  by  the 
winds  of  northern  seas,  to  Anglo-Saxon  an- 
cestry, and  there  is  a  heraldry  can  blazon 
your  title  to  that  remote  Adam  (or  to  those 
remoter  Adamses)  who  first  stood  erect  and 

»  121 


enforced  service  from  all  his  congeners  of  the 
slime  ?  But  you  are  an  heir,  a  progenition,  a 
composite  picture  of  all  the  lives  of  your 
fathers  who  have  lived  during  all  the  years 
since.  I  am  sure  yours  is  a  noble  strain  of 
Thinkers  and  Doers.  Your  Psyche!  Alas, 
of  what  does  it  not  assume  wardship  .? 

You  know  the  story  of  Psyche — the  story 
painted  on  the  wall  and  ceiling  of  the  Farnese 
Palace  .?  It  is  of  her  triumph  and  translation 
to  the  home  of  the  gods  through  the  inter- 
vention of  Cupid  and  her  marriage  to  him. 
It  is  a  personification  of  the  soul  perfected  by 
love.  Shall  not  Psyche,  through  love,  create 
a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth,  and  Man, 
immensely  gianted,  become  the  sum  of  all 
creatures  ?  The  conception  of  Christ  as  the 
Son-of-Man  is  a  prodigious  step  toward  the 
realization  of  that  final  consummation. 

You  "wish  to  know  why  man  should  not 
have  been  created  a  spiritual-soul  in  the  first 
instance;  why  he  was  made  'a  little  lower 
than  the  angels'  to  begin  with.?"  And  you 
add:  "If  he  had  been  made  perfect  in  the 
beginning,  it  would  have  saved  a  world  of 
trouble."  "Well,"  as  Dundreary  says,  "that 
is  another  of  those  things  no  fellow  can  find 

122 


out" — yet!  Would  you  have  him  an  angel? 
Beware  of  Lucifer!  But  you  might  ask  why 
all  flowers  do  not  grow  spontaneously  in  the 
air,  or  on  your  hat,  and  all  of  them  your 
favorite  roses! 

"Why"  is  the  word  of  curiosity,  of  prog- 
ress, and  in  the  long-run  is  answered;  and 
that  is  what  faith  in  God  means — the  as- 
surance of  the  answer.  The  Life  of  the  Uni- 
verse is  being  lived;  we  can  grow  with  it,  or  we 
can  cumber  the  ground.  You  know  the  say- 
ing, "A  letter  unanswered  answers  itself."  All 
letters  are  answered  in  the  progress  of  that  life. 

The  homely  speech,  "It  will  all  come  out  in 
the  washing,"  is  but  another  expression  of 
that  common  faith  in  the  ultimate  explana- 
tion— the  cleansing  from  all  doubt. 

Sj»  5j!  J^C  3p  "I* 

Faithfully  yours. 


Capri,  Italy,    April  2,   190-. 

My  dear : 

This  afternoon  I  wandered  up  my  accus- 
tomed route  and  had  a  seance  with  my 
Ancient  of  Days  at  his  friendly  door.     All  the 

123 


island  is  abloom,  and  was  reflected  in  the 
cheeriness  of  him  in  whose  veins  the  wine  of 
life  is  renewed  with  the  flowering  spring.  I 
do  not  wait  for  your  reply  to  my  last  letter 
before  giving  you  a  new  personal  experience, 
and  trying  to  answer  how  long  a  person's  re- 
incarnations were  to  be  kept  up  "as  a  going 
concern,"  and  what  they  have  to  do  with  the 
"spoilt  child." 

From  what  I  can  make  out  from  the  de- 
tached emanations,  so  to  speak,  of  my  old 
friend,  rewards  and  punishments  as  we  style 
them,  cause  and  effect  in  his  vocabulary, 
are  meted  out  through  reincarnations,  and 
throughout  them  the  human  soul  is  ever 
helped  toward  perfection  by  the  constant 
effluence  of  the  Life  of  the  Universe — the 
Spiritual  Force  of  God.  The  survival  of  the 
fittest  (the  fightest,  if  you  will)  is  but  the 
selection  by  this  Force  of  the  means  of  prog- 
ress. It  is  a  good  deal  like  the  scholar 
working  his  way,  by  excelHng  in  learning,  to 
the  head  of  his  class  with  the  aid  of  the 
teacher.  The  Soul  continually  grows  into 
the  sacred  image  of  the  Father — until  it  can 
say:  "I  and  my  Father  are  one,"  and  then 
the  cycle  of  life  on  earth  is  complete.     As 

124 


belief  in  eternal  life — a  self-consciousness  of 
it — is  the  muniment  of  an  individual's  title 
thereto,  so  disbelief  is  a  negation,  a  dis- 
possession of  it.  Yet  an  individual,  self- 
conscious  of  eternal  life  in  himself,  may  seek 
reincarnation  for  the  purgation  of  effects 
caused  by  his  former  lives.  That  is,  an  in- 
dividual may  be  entitled  to  live  everlastingly, 
but  his  happiness  may  require  reincarnations 
to  free  himself  from  previous  ill-doings — from 
the  effect  of  "deeds  done  in  the  body,"  for 
it  is  by  good  deeds  that  every  man  is  to 
attain  happiness.  Reincarnation  v^ill  cease 
when  the  soul  is  in  perfect  accord  v^ith  the 
Life  of  the  Universe — at  one  with  God,  and 
that  at-oneness  will  be  when  it  can  be  said 
of  it  as  of  one  of  old:  "Enoch  walked  with 
God;  and  was  not,  for  God  took  him."  Was 
not  Jesus  of  Nazareth  a  Son  of  Man  become 
a  Son  of  God,  an  individual  entity  possessed 
of  the  quality  of  Everlasting  Life,  sinless  as 
well,  and,  as  such  exalted  personage,  may  He 
not,  if  He  will,  reincarnate  in  a  human  body 
as  easily  as  He  may  dwell  in  the  ether — in  fine, 
may  He  not  "come  again".?  General  Lew 
Wallace  would  never  consent  to  the  drama- 
tization of  Ben-Hur  for  the  stage  until  the 

125 


Nazarene  should  appear  only  as  a  light,  in 
which  the  lepers  were  healed,  exemplifying 
the  scripture  that  "in  Him  was  life;  and  the 
life  was  the  light  of  men." 

I  asked  the  Hermit,  "If  the  Kingdom  of 
God  is  within  us,  and  is  a  condition  of  the 
soul,  will  that  condition  involve  any  powers, 
as  of  healing,  or  of  obtaining  knowledge, 
illumination   of  the   understanding  ?" 

He  answered:  "To  attain  that  condition 
the  first  thing  is  to  obey  the  command,  'Love 
God  with  all  your  heart  and  your  neighbor 
as  yourself.'  Then  there  comes  an  effluence 
from  the  source  of  all  life  which  transfuses 
and  enlightens  the  Soul.  Why  or  how  I  do  not 
know;  I  simply  know  it  is  so  by  being  con- 
scious of  its  inspiriting  power,  which  each 
soul  must  'feel  to  know.'" 

"What  is  the  effect  upon  one  in  his  rela- 
tion to  his  fellows  ?"  I  asked. 

"Well,  practically,  it  is  a  prompting  to  go 
about  doing  good." 

"Then,"  I  returned,  "I  suppose  a  man,  so 
conditioned,  lives  by  what  he  feeds  on,  as 
'Every  man  is  the  son  of  his  own  works'; 
but  has  such  a  man  any  extraordinary,  not 
to  say  supernatural  or  occult,  power  ?" 

126 


"That  is  a  matter  you  will  know  more  of 
when  you  attain  to  it,"  was  his  answer.  But 
he  resumed:  "'Eye  hath  not  seen  nor  ear 
heard  .  .  .  the  things  which  God  hath  prepared 
for  them  that  love  Him'— and,  my  son,  let  me 
add,  for  them  you  love." 

I  scarcely  think  his  addenda  was  intended 
specifically  for  myself,  but  was  applicable  to 
one  who  should  love  his  neighbor  as  him- 
self; yet  I  doubt  not  that  eye  hath  not  seen, 
nor  ear  heard,  the  things  prepared  for  him  you 
love.  He  is  a  very  loving  as  well  as  lovely 
old  man,  and  was  quite  rhapsodical  when  he 
continued:  "Love  is  the  universal  harmony, 
the  cohesive  force  of  all  matter,  and  in  'the 
sweet  influences  of  the  Pleiades'  all  the  stars 
of  heaven  feel  its  centring  force;  and  why 
should  the  Soul  of  man  be  ashamed  to  ac- 
knowledge and  glory  in  this  power  to  love 
which  centres  in  the  very  God  ?" 

"Then,"  I  added,  "it  is  worth  while  to 
love  even  for  love's  own  sake." 

With  a  quizzical  glance  at  me,  he  rejoined: 
"Yes,  if  it  will  keep  you  in  Capri!" 

I  sat  there  beside  him,  warm  in  the  sun- 
setting,  for  some  time,  thankful  that  the  dear 
old  man  was  in  any  wise  pleased  to  have  me 

127 


remain  in  the  island,  while  the  bHthe  air  over 
blossoming  vines  brought  up  the  perfume 
of  the  springtime  from  the  underlying  vine- 
yards, until,  turning  to  him,  I  found  him  with 
closed  eyes,  relaxed  at  ease  in  his  arm-chair, 
lapsed  into  a  state  of  dreaminess  with  a  seem- 
ing consciousness  that  he  was  dreaming,  to 
judge  from  the  placid  expression  of  his  face. 
After  a  moment  he  awoke,  to  gaze  at  me  with 
those  illumining  brown  eyes  as  if  to  impart 
his  dream;  but  with  a  smile  of  kindliness 
wrinkling  up  his  eyes  he  only  said:  "I  shall 
miss  you." 

I  thanked  him  for  his  interest  in  me,  and, 
as  the  sun  hovered  over  Monte  Solaro  in  the 
west,  bade  him  "good-evening,"  but  lightly 
called  back,  as  I  descended  the  chapel  steps, 
"I  haven't  gone  yet!" 

I  went  down  over  the  ruins  some  three 
hundred  yards,  and  turned  aside  from  the 
path  once  more  to  enjoy  the  extended  view 
of  the  sea  and  island  from  the  top  of  the  old 
lighthouse  perched  on  the  cliff  over  the  sea. 
Climbing  up,  I  sat  there  some  time,  content  to 
inhale  the  gracious  air,  and,  relaxed  into  a 
brown-study,  to  follow  the  wake  of  the  sun 
as  it  led  westward   toward  home   and  you, 

128 


when  I  distinctly  heard  a  clear,  bell-like  voice 
exclaiming:  ''Oh,  my  beloved,  come!"  It  was 
an  appealing,  assertive  voice.  I  heard  it  not 
from  without  or  from  a  distance,  but  as  an 
articulate  speech  in  my  inner  ear — at  the 
spot  in  the  brain  where  we  do  hear. 

Aroused,  I  wondered  if  my  Seer  was  ex- 
ercising one  of  his  occult  gifts  on  me;  or  was 
I  becoming  nervously  excited  by  my  night 
watches  with  him  on  the  mountain,  and  my 
"subjective"  was  juggling  with  my  "ob- 
jective" in  make-believes;  or  had  I  intercept- 
ed some  wireless  telegram  designed  for  some 
wanderino;  lover  ? — for  the  voice  was  melodious, 
of  timbre  feminine!  Really,  would  it  not  be 
something  dizzily  occult  if  one  could  only 
"hear  what  is  whispered  in  the  King's  bed- 
chamber" .f* 

I  proceeded  homeward  as  far  as  the  little 
church  of  San  Michele,  which  stands  at  the 
north  side  of  my  way,  near  the  town,  and  had 
sat  down  on  the  rude  steps  leading  up  from 
the  road  toward  the  church,  when  there  came 
up  along  the  steep  ascent  from  the  town  my 
lady  of  the  pillar  in  San  Stefano,  also  of  the 
Chapel  steps  and  kodak — and,  was  it  not,  I 
wonder,   of  the   cavern   of  the   Castiglione! 

129 


How  comely  she  was  in  her  simple,  gray  dress 
of  woollen,  on  her  head  the  ever-worn  Capri 
scarf  of  varied  and  bright  hue,  and  on  her 
feet  the  white  cotton  shoes  with  soles  of 
hempen  cord  which  cling  to  the  rocky  paths! 
As  she  approached  with  hesitating  pause  of 
recognition  and  inquiry,  I  rose  with  hat  raised 
in  respectful  salute,  to  which  she,  in  the 
musical  Italian  aspirate,  "II  Signor!"  re- 
sponded, with  a  gentle  inclination  of  her  head, 
while  her  dark  eyes,  timorously  confident  of 
friendliness,  held  my  salutation  in  privilege, 
as  she  stood  with  questioning  lips  apart. 
She,  evidently,  had  not  halted  in  dalliance  or 
w^ithout  the  authority  of  purpose.  Now 
that  she  was  near,  facing  me,  I  could  see 
where  the  Greek  had  left  his  modelled  grace 
of  form  and  strength  of  profile  to  wander 
down  the  years.  A  fine  sensibility  played 
about  the  corners  of  her  mouth  and  eyes,  the 
former  responsive  to  the  latter.  Imper- 
sonality was  in  the  atmosphere  of  her,  yet 
with  a  pervading  individuality  giving  strength 
and  purpose,  as  if  she  put  aside  herself  in  the 
thought  which  preoccupied  her  or  the  message 
she  had  in  charge.  I  stood  thus,  hat  in  hand, 
not   a    little    in    awe,  before   this    admirable 

130 


epitome  of  historic  Capri,  and  was  at  a  loss 
to  imagine  why  so  evidently  she  should  wish 
to  interview  me.  While  the  faintest  blush 
hovered  about  her  temples  below  her  gray- 
black  hair,  she  began: 

"You  have  been  with  our  friend,  the 
Hermit  ?" 

She  laid  no  emphasis  on  the  "our,"  nor 
did  she  consciously  use  it  as  a  confidence  be- 
tween us,  but  it  was  as  a  relation  granted  as 
of  course,  an  indefinite  adjective. 

"Oh  yes,  I  left  him  not  a  quarter  of  an 
hour  ago.     The  descent  is  rapid,"  I  answered. 

She  continued:  "Are  you  going  away  .''" 

"Away  .?    From  Capri,  do  you  mean  ?    No." 

"I  was  told  to  meet  you  as  you  came  down 
the  way,  and,  if  I  could,  ask  you." 

Surprised,  I  interrupted  with:  "You  were 
told  to  ask  me!  Who  is  so  interested  ?  May 
I  be  curious  enough  to  inquire  who  told  you 
to  question  me  ?" 

She  smiled,  and,  with  a  lighting  eye,  an- 
swered: "He  did." 

"When?" 

"Within  the  hour." 

"Where?" 

"While  I  was  at  my  home  in  the  town.     He 

131 


told  me  to  meet  you  here  and  ask.     Shall  I 
tell  him  you  say,  'No'?" 

"Certainly,  if  you  are  going  up  to  Villa 
Jovis,  and  will  be  so  kind — " 

"But  1  do  not  have  to  go  up  to  tell  him," 
she  broke  in. 

Amazed,  I  stammered:  "You — you  do  not 
have  to  go  up  to  see  him  to — to  tell  him!" 

"No.     Don't  you  know?" 

"Yes,  I  begin  to  understand.  It  is  one  of 
those  things  that  'eye  hath  not  seen  nor  ear 
heard,  prepared  for — for  them  that — '" 

"Yes!  yes!"  With  radiant  face,  she  in- 
terrupted me.     "He  has  been  telling  you." 

And,  giving  me  a  parting  smile  and  bow, 
with  springing  step  she  passed  on  over  the 
stone-paved  way,  and  was  at  once  lost  to  my 
sight  in  its  near  windings. 

Thereupon,  directly,  I  began  the  steep 
descent  from  the  little  church,  and  in  a  five 
minutes  of  slipping  and  sliding  down  the 
pitching  grade  of  the  stone  pavement  entered 
one  of  those  long  arcades  between  the  houses 
of  the  town  where,  on  either  side,  shops  and 
children  do  most  abound,  and  soon  was  at 
my  hotel.  Heigho!  Capri  is  not  "so  far 
away,"  after  all. 

132 


I  hope  soon  to  unravel  the  knitting  for  your 
entertainment.    Meanwhile  I  remain,  as  ever, 
Faithfully  yours, 


-,  U.  S.  A.,  April  2,  190-. 


My  dear  : 

^'You  may  fill  the  blank."  It  is  already 
full  in  my  heart. 

This  is  the  first  day  of  our  spring  vacation, 
and  it  brought  v^ith  it  your  dear  letter  of 
March  20th,  while  a  few  friends  were  with 
me  at  noon  luncheon.  The  girls  have  just 
gone,  and  I  have  fled  to  my  room,  and  in 
tears  have  read  your  every  word. 

Yes,  indeed,  I  do  remember  the  "good 
times 

"'O'  Life!  we've  had  long  together.'" 

And  now,  dear,  I  do  not  want  to  do  anything 
in  the  world  without  you!  I  have  suffered 
until  I  can  endure  it  no  longer.  Every  letter 
you  have  written  has  been  to  me  a  reproach 
as  well  as  a  gladness.     The  world  has  seemed 


to  be  gliding  from  under  me  ever  since  you 
went  away.     I  had  lost  gravity. 

Some  time  ago,  in  one  of  your  letters,  you 
asked  what  was  my  "bitter  disappointment," 
and  I  was  not  brave  enough  to  tell  you. 

You  know,  you  and  I  always  have  been 
loyal  comrades;  and,  unconsciously,  or,  as  you 
metaphysicians  say,  "subjectively,"  I  always 
must  have  felt  that  oneness  of  thought  and 
sympathy  with  you  which,  ever  since  your 
departure  "for  rest  from  worrisome  work," 
as  you  gayly  put  it,  has  come  home  to  me  as  a 
possible  loss  most  unbearable  until  I  have 
become  jealous  of  your  Hermit  even. 

Sincerity  is  evidenced  by  confession,  and 
that  is  repentance.  You  alone  can  give  me 
absolution. 

"Mr.  Call,"  as  you  have  been  pleased  to 
name  him,  caught  my  fancy  as  something 
new.  He  was  evidently  in  earnest  in  his 
court,  and  I  believed  him — one  of  the  "some 
I  have  believed."  Yet  when  he  made  his 
avowal,  a  few  days  before  you  left  for  Europe, 
I  found,  to  my  surprise,  /  did  not  love  him! 
I  had  fancied  I  did,  and,  frankly,  this  dis- 
covery that  I  did  not  was  a  "bitter  disap- 
pointment"; for  I  was  so  fascinated  with  the 

134 


idea  of  being  "in  love"  that  when  he  "pro- 
posed" I  was  dumfounded  to  find  suddenly 
arise  in  me  a  deadly  repulsion  for  him.  A 
sudden  realization  of  what  true-love  was  took 
possession  of  me.  He  was  an  unknown 
quantity,  an  X,  and  I  was  no  Y,  and  we  could 
not  equal  anything.  Not  that  there  was  any 
known  objection  to  him!  But  an  utter  re- 
vulsion seized  me.  It  was  as  if  he,  a  stranger, 
had  attacked  me.  I  hated  him  abhorrently; 
partly,  I  suppose,  because  I  so  hated  myself 
for  my  total  lack  of  self-knowledge.  I  did, 
in  truth,  all  the  while,  love.  My  love  was  so 
perfect  and  it  so  rounded  my  days  with  such 
peaceful  assurance  that,  without  asking  my- 
self why,  I  found  that  I  had  treasured,  not 
only  your  every  word  and  look,  but,  with  the 
tenderest  care,  as  a  matter  of  course,  had  pre- 
served every  transient  note,  flower,  book, 
picture,  and  all  that,  which  you  had  given  me 
in  the  gayety  and  frank  cordiality  of  our 
comradeship.  But  this  episode  brought  me 
to  my  senses.  Oh,  the  pang  of  it  when  we 
parted  in  the  sunshine  at  the  gate!  I  had 
sinned  against  you — and  myself.  The  Spirit 
of  Love,  grieved,  was  about  to  take  its  flight 
with  you. 

135 


As  we  stood  there  In  the  glow  of  the  parting 
day  I  felt  the  sun  going  down  on  my  sin,  and 
was  speechless  with  the  shame  of  it,  knowing 
that  you  thought  me  disloyal  to  our  unspoken 
past;  yet  you  must  have  felt  the  truth!  I 
know  you  did!  I  could  not  forgive  myself 
enough  to  be  frank  with  you — that  was  the 
"bitter  disappointment,"  indeed. 

You  would  have  pitied  and  forgiven  me  if 
you  had  known  why,  as  you  say,  I  turned 
from  you  and  walked  away  so  straight, 
without  looking  back,  after  asking  you  to 
write  that  I  might  know  you  were  "all  right." 
Lot's  wife  saved  me! 

Now,  dear,  is  it  "all  a  puzzle".''  Does 
anybody  "trouble"  you.?  Now!  wont  you 
"speak  for  yourself,  John".''  Dearest,  with 
all  my  love,  I  send  you  many  messages  from 
my  strong  and  constant  heart. 

Oh,  my  beloved,  come! — when  you  will. 

Auf  Wiedersehen. 

Faithfully  yours. 


THE    END 


^I'limiJiiiiilitt^iF.?'  Seminary  Libra 


ries 


1    1012  0 


235  8232 


